2010-03-09

America's Epic Fail

These two articles were stacked one on top of the other.

How many people drew the connection between the two?

Neither individuals nor governments have saved for retirement. The solution is greater risk taking (commodities, junk bonds, riskier stocks, etc.) and unreasonable expectations about market returns. This means that they are unlikely to save enough due to assuming large future gains (notably those gains are only possible if there's a large amount of savings to fund an economic expansion...) and they are likely taking risks that will actually cause them to underperform the real expected return.

Instead of saving more and aiming for a more conservative return, they will stretch and suffer losses. And that's assuming things work out, what happens if stock markets tumble or inflation destroys fixed income portfolios?

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