Watch this video. The key points start coming out at 2:20 or so, and continue on to the end.

I have some huge questions about this, and I’m sure you will too after viewing it. Let’s talk about it in the comments.

(h/t Boing Boing)

Tim Rutten’s appallingly ignorant editorial in today’s LA Times is the reason no one should rely upon a single mainstream source for their information. Rutten’s contention that the 401k plan is a failed experiment that was always intended to diminish workers’ retirements is the kind of sublime fiction that plays best with perpetual victims and incurable romantics.

Let’s debunk some of his fiction with facts:

An evolving workforce

Here’s the problem: In 1978, when Congress amended the Internal Revenue Code to include Section 401(k), it envisioned the provision mainly as a way for workers to supplement their companies’ traditional defined-benefit pension plans and Social Security. (Secondarily, it also was a nifty hideaway where highly paid executives could shelter income from taxes.)

Well, yes and no. In 1978, Congress understood that the personal savings rate was inadequate, that many baby boomers would not have the funds to retire if they relied upon their corporate pensions and Social Security alone, and IRAs were not getting much traction with the middle class and entry level groups.

Anyone who had their hands on Defined Benefit plans back in 1978 knew exactly what the problem was: Benefits were based on a set of assumptions made by actuaries about what the world would look like in 30 or 40 years, they were offset in one form or another by projected Social Security benefits, and were etched in stone. I can remember feeling incredibly foolish about preparing statements for employees trumpeting the $78.00 per month retirement benefit they were entitled to in 20 years.

Traditional pension plans (what I’ll refer to as DB plans for the rest of this post) were based upon the theory that the employer had an duty and obligation to reward long-term employees with a lifetime income when they retired.

But in 1978, the workforce was less stable. The days of going to work for a company and staying until one retired were in the past. Looking back at the difference between my grandmother and my mother’s careers (both for the same company in its various forms – Bell Telephone, Pacific Telephone, Pacific Bell, AT&T), it was clear that there was no longer any expectation on the part of employer or employee of long-term or career-long employment. Job-hopping was expected if anyone actually wanted advancement.

As to Rutten’s assertion that they were also a sweet tax shelter for the highly-paid, I can only say this: They were a sweeter tax shelter for the worker.

The Reagan Years, or the Big Pension Money Grab

Rutten goes on to contend that employers were looking for ways to get out of funding their pension and health plans, and turned to 401k plans as the answer. Again, he misses an entire chapter of Reaganomic revenue neutral pension-killing history in his analysis.

There is a dirty chapter in the history of pensions. When Reagan took office, interest rates were at an all-time high. Rates as high as 21% on short-term certificates of deposit were the norm.

Pension trustees have a duty to invest pension funds as a prudent man familiar with such matters would invest, and you can bet that a prudent man would see an investment in a 21% short-term Certificate of Deposit as a prudent one, particularly when the funds are insured. Right? Investments were made, only sometimes at Savings and Loans rather than banks (remember that the S&Ls were NOT insured..that will play into the scene), and big returns paid on investments.

Actuaries are paid to set assumptions for the long-term. As a consequence, they did not view the high interest rates as reason for an assumptions adjustment, understanding that they were aberrant and would work themselves out in time.

Under Reagan, the IRS was instructed to audit as many pension plans as possible, particularly the plans of small to medium-size employers, and challenge their interest rate assumptions in an effort to disqualify their deductible contribution and pull more revenue into the Treasury.

The audit program was a magnificent failure, but it set the stage for Congress to pass a law legislating a mandate for actuaries to set pension liabilities in lockstep with the movement of interest rates up or down.

In turn, that set the stage for a monumental pension plan meltdown. What happened next set the ball in motion for the rise of 401k plans and the death of the traditional pension.

Congress passed OBRA ‘87, which limited the tax deduction allowed for pension plans to an amount calculated using an inflated interest rate. As a consequence, many plans appeared to be overfunded, which made balance sheets look great, but increased tax obligations for nearly everyone, most particularly small to medium-sized businesses.

To sum it up, Congress took the actions of an aggressive and wrong Internal Revenue Service and made laws that pushed pensions from the long-term outlook to the here-and-now for employers, while leaving employees with a theoretical retirement income and nothing real to show for their work.

For the next 20 years, pension legislation became the tax-revenue football, tossed from one side of the field to the next with no long-term idea of what a reasonable outcome should be, and certainly no sense of social responsibility for the worker.

When Rutten makes the claim that there was some conspiracy of opposing ideologies merging to form the 401k’s emergence, he’s got it backwards. The conspiracy of ideology killed traditional pensions, leaving employers with balance sheets that ballooned or shrunk depending on the whims of short term interest rates set by the Fed.

Simplicity and Portability: The New Standards

Here is a simple fact: For traditional pension plans to work, there must be a commitment to a long-term program that remains stable and impervious to the whims of markets and men.

We don’t live in a world or a legislative environment that invites such a commitment. This is the world where the 401k became king.

In Rutten’s world, companies “seized the opportunity to abandon their defined-benefit pension plans”. In actuality, the laws were so complex and the cost to maintain them so prohibitive, with so little return for the investment that employers and employees looked to 401k plans as a middle-of-the-road compromise.

In the eyes of an employee, a traditional pension plan looked like a dinosaur when compared with a 401k plan. The employee controlled the savings rate, the investments, and had access to daily reports if they wanted them.

You’d be surprised how many do want them. Employees are not the idiots Rutten describes here:

Today, more than 60% of all U.S. workers rely on 401(k)s as their primary retirement fund. They’re not eager to “choose” their own retirement program, nor are they enthusiastic “owners” of American business. They’re draftees. Essentially, millions of us have been conscripted into the equities markets, where we have helped fuel stock prices and provided a bonanza for the financial services companies that manage and sell investment funds.

Oh, no. The employees are not the victims, not by a long shot. I should probably remind Rutten that if 401k plans had not risen as they had, those same investment managers and insurance companies would have made just as much, if not more money and had more control of expanded and bloated contributions to traditional pensions if they had continued on through the last 15 years or so. If you think the unemployment numbers are bad now, try doubling them when employers have to balance pension obligations against workforce.

The issue isn’t whether dollars would go into the system; the issue is how and by whom those dollars would be contributed.

IBM tried to mitigate the problem by putting a cash balance approach in place. That approach set a defined benefit for all workers in place and offset the cost of the benefit with the 401k balance. It was an idea ahead of its time, because it allowed for the market variance to increase an employee’s pension while still keeping the baseline guarantee in place.

Ultimately IBM was sued for their attempt to ‘rob employees of their pensions’ and was forced to reinstate their traditional program just long enough to meet their obligations before it was terminated. The 2006 Pension Protection Act resurrected the cash balance plan as a viable way to balance guaranteed benefits against equity growth options, but it may still be an endangered species.

Reality bites. Reality is that pensions in this country are not provided by a few large corporations. Small business fuels a much larger sector of our working population, and small business cannot possibly assume the incredibly complex and often expensive obligations that come with the traditional pension model.

On the employee side, there was a clamor rising. Employees were barred from deductible IRA contributions if they were covered by an employer pension plan, but the benefits they were earning were inadequate to provide a decent retirement, even when combined with Social Security. There was a rising clamor among employees, demanding that they have the right to save for retirement through their employer, that they receive tax-favored treatment for those savings, and because it was “their money”, they wanted control.

Further, they wanted to take it with them to the next employer and the next, rather than risk losing part of their retirement if a former employer went out of business.

Employees weren’t asked because employees were asking. In the 90’s, particularly the mid to late 90’s, the ones asking for the 401k plan were the employees, not the other way around. Most employers were neutral about it, but employees were absolute: They wanted control, they wanted choice, they wanted the opportunity to manage their own retirement plans. To be a competitive employer, a 401k was a must in the benefit package mix.

What happens when all the rules break? Or are broken?

Enter 2008, the year that everything everyone knew to be true was proven false. In investment policy land, there are a few basic rules. We all know them. If stocks drop, bonds are the fail-safe to hold steady. If interest rates rise, invest in mortgages for the return. If all else fails, keep your money in cash investments where you won’t make much but you won’t lose much either.

Every one of those rules broke in 2008. Every investment manager I know, including the one I live with, was left on a floor trying to sweep up the shards and put them back together in some sort of meaningful order. Bernard Madoff’s enormous scam aside, all of us have to accept that the collapse of the markets last year broke every single rule taken as gospel by the majority of those who manage investments, analyze markets, understand how investing and capital markets work.

You will hear theories for years and years. I believe we will eventually discover a deep well of greed and avarice on a global and mind-bending scale at the genesis of this crisis.

What you will not hear: the 401k experiment fueled the crisis or bankrupted our populace. It simply isn’t true. It’s Rutten being hysterical about his own losses, but the fact is that 401k plans remain viable, and are one of our best pathways out of the mess going forward (provided employees ignore hysterics like Rutten and think logically).

My 401k has lost about $10,000 since last year. That’s a significant hit for me, but it’s all on paper. I have continued to contribute and actually increased my savings rate right now, keeping my focus on the long-term and my retirement years 20 years down the road. I didn’t liquidate anything nor do I plan to. Not only that, but when I find another job, I can take my 401k balance with me.

So I haven’t lost a darn thing. Not one penny.

On the other hand, if Rutten had his way, we’d all liquidate and make those losses real in the name of a ‘failed experiment’. It’s laughable to hear him quote Robyn Credico’s sudden epiphany on the failure of 401k plans, given her recommendation just over a year ago that employees be allowed to invest 401k funds in annuities at a time where the insurance industry teetered on the brink of being the loss leaders of our modern time.

401k plans may be the way back. At the bottom of this crisis is a crisis of confidence. We have the choice to pick up our toys and go hide in a cave, or to boldly use the combined leverage of our 401k investments to fund a future where we can retire comfortably. It’s risky, but 401k participants have been taking the risk for the past 25 years or so, every time they allow part of their paycheck to be invested.

Before writing 401k plans off as a failed experiment, I’d suggest that Tim Rutten get in touch with his facts and the reality of our times. There will be no return to the days where benevolent employers gave us our gold watch and lifetime pension. On the other hand, we now have the clout and the ability to shape what our future will be. We are not at the mercy of financiers; we ARE the financiers. We need confidence and integrity returned to our regulatory system to complete the picture.

Change is coming.

John McCain is once again rolling the dice for a high-stakes win. Having demonstrated his capacity for self-contradiction at any turn and suffering in the polls as a result of his past positions and current confusion with the state of our economy, he’s ditching the issues in favor of a risky and flawed attempt to turn the conversation back to culture wars and personal attacks (something he swore he’d never do, of course, but what else is new?)

In the meantime, there are two issues which McCain cannot address adequately. The first is the economy, which he neither understands nor supports. I encourage you to watch the video below to see how McCain, in his own words, falters when he first tries to argue for the value of deregulated financial markets and then, when confronted with the product of those same unregulated markets, turns it around and says he supports regulations to protect citizens.

Here’s reality. Reality is that under a McCain/Palin presidency, any regulatory authority would largely be ignored anyway. McCain has deep ties to Freddie Mac, including large monthly payments to his campaign manager for his lobbying efforts on behalf of Freddie Mac through last month,

This is not new. In the 80’s McCain was one of the Keating Five, the man in the middle of the last financial/real estate scandal of our time — the Savings and Loan meltdown. And then, just as now, it was McCain’s agreement to push for little to no regulation of Savings and Loans that brought down many property owners and small community Savings and Loan Associations.

McCain also doesn’t understand health care and the current issues facing this country in that regard. His plan proposes that we all take a gamble with our health and our homes, a topic I will cover in a separate post.

Watch the video and ask yourself how willing you are to allow John McCain to gamble with what little you have left. On a personal note, I am fairly certain that my father was a compulsive gambler in his later years. When he died in August, he had next to nothing and was dependent upon others for everything. Is that the future we see for our country?

I’m reading it now. It certainly seems to have been fleshed out — you can read it here.

More after I’ve read through the whole thing. The devil is definitely in the details.

Tonight, Mitt Romney added his name to the list of Republicans
working to distorting the record on John McCain’s promise of more of
the same.

RHETORIC: “We need change
all right – change from a liberal Washington to a conservative
Washington! We have a prescription for every American who wants
change in Washington – throw out the big government liberals and elect
John McCain.”

REALITY: MCCAIN HAS SUPPORTED BUSH’S BIG BUDGETS AND GOVERNMENT EXPANSION

McCain Voted for 4 of 6 Bush Budgets Adding Up To $9.8 Trillion.
McCain supported four of the five Bush budgets that the Senate voted on
from 2001-2006. McCain: Y. [2001 Senate Vote #98; McCain Voted to
Table, 2002 Senate Vote #134; 2004 Senate Vote #58; 2005 Senate Vote
#114; 2006 Senate Vote #74]

According To White House, Federal Spending Under Bush Grew By 46.5 Percent From 2001 Through 2007, Or $867 Billion Dollars. Total
outlays by the Budget Enforcement Act between 2001 and 2007 grew by
$867 billion, or 46.5 percent, according to White House Historical
Budget Tables. [White House Outlays from FY 2009 Historical Tables,
Budget of the United States Government, Table 8.1, http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2009/sheets/hist08z1.xls, accessed 9/3/08]

RHETORIC: “The right course is the one championed
by Ronald Reagan 30 years ago, and by John McCain today. It is to rein
in government spending and lower taxes…”

REALITY: MCCAIN CANNOT AFFORD HIS IRRESPONSIBLE TAX PLAN

McCain’s
Tax Cuts Will Either Explode The Federal Deficit Or Require
“Unprecedented Cuts” In Federal Spending On Domestic Programs.
“Sen. John McCain is proposing tax cuts that would either cause the
federal deficit to explode or would require unprecedented spending cuts
equal to one-third of federal spending on domestic programs. Once
thought of as a deficit hawk, the near-certain Republican presidential
nominee is now putting more stress on the traditional Republican
orthodoxy of tax cuts.” [Wall Street Journal, 4/22/08]

McCain Will Not Come “Anywhere Close” To Paying for His Tax Cuts.
McCain’s promised “savings in government spending he promises will not
come anywhere close to paying for the tax cuts. Mr. McCain once bravely
argued against Mr. Bush’s tax cuts, because there was no cash to pay
for them; with the government already running a big deficit, and no
progress on reining in spending on health care and pensions, it would
be odd to junk that prudence now. America can ill-afford another
profligate Republican; and once again directing most of the benefits to
the well-off is tone-deaf politics.” [The Economist, 4/19/08]

RHETORIC:
“Liberals would replace opportunity with dependency on government
largesse. They would grow government and raise taxes to put more
people on Medicaid, to work requirements out of welfare, and to grow
the ranks of those who pay no taxes at all.”

REALITY: MCCAIN HAS RENEGED ON PROMISE TO BALANCE THE BUDGET AND ONLY PROMISES TAX CUTS FOR WEALTHY AMERICANS

McCain Backed Away From Commitment To Balance The Budget.
“Mr. McCain — who said in February in Wisconsin that he would balance
the budget by the end of his first term as president — seemed to
reconsider that on Tuesday, saying at a news conference later in
Villanova that ‘economic conditions are reversed’ nd that he would have
a balanced budget within eight years. His economic aides said they
could pay for all the tax cuts with spending cuts.” McCain’s chief
economic advisor, Doug Holtz-Eakin, also said that it would take two
terms. [New York Times, 4/16/08 nytimes.com; Boston Globe, 4/15/08, boston.com]

2008: Tax Policy Center: McCain’s Tax Plan Is Not For the Middle Class.
Despite McCain’s claims that he would help the middle class, “it turns
out that middle-class families would do better under Obama (who would
cut their taxes by $1000 in 2009) than McCain (who would cut them by
only $300). McCain, who once opposed President Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax
cut as a give-away to the rich, but now embraces them, has designed a
plan more consistent with the New McCain than the old.” In a McCain tax
regime, “the top 20% of taxpayers get a 3% reduction in after-tax
income in 2009, while the lowest-earning 60% would get less than 1%.”
[Tax Policy Center, Urban Institute and Brookings Institution, 6/12/08,
http://taxvox.taxpolicycenter.org/]

RHETORIC:
The right course “is to pursue every source of energy security, from
new efficiencies to renewables, from clean coal to non-CO2 producing
nuclear, and the immediate drilling for more oil off of our shores!”

REALITY: MCCAIN HAS REPEATEDLY OPPOSED INVESTING IN RENAWABLE AND ALTERNATIVE ENERGY

McCain Voted At Least Five Times Against Renewable Energy Mandates.
[2005 Senate Vote #141, 6/16/2005; 2002 Senate Vote #59, 3/21/2002;
2002 Senate Vote #58, 3/21/2002; 2002 Senate Vote #55, 3/21/2002; 2002
Senate Vote #50, 3/14/2002]

McCain Voted At Least Seventeen Times Against Renewable And Alternative Fuel Mandates.
[2005 Senate Vote #139, #138; 2004 Senate Vote #74, #73; 2003 Senate
Vote #317, #209, #207, #206, #204, #203; 2002 Senate Vote #91, #88,
#78; 1994 Senate Vote #255, 8/3/1994; 1992 Senate Vote #150, #27,#18]

RHETORIC:
“Is government spending – excluding inflation – liberal or conservative
if it doubles since 1980? – It’s liberal! We need change all right -
change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington!”

REALITY: BUSH-MCCAIN ECONOMIC POLICIES HAVE INCREASED GOVERNMENT SPENDING BY 64% SINCE 2000

During the Bush Presidency Total Federal Government Outlays Increased By 64%–Far Outpacing Inflation.
Congressional Quarterly wrote that total defense spending under
President Bush, “increased by 106 percent from fiscal 2000 to 2008, all
other spending rose 55 percent. Overall, total outlays were projected
in February to exceed $2.93 trillion in the current fiscal year, a 64
percent increase from $1.79 trillion in 2000. That far outpaces the 27
percent inflation in prices over the past eight years.” [Congressional
Quarterly, 7/27/08]

Federal Spending Per Household Grew
More Than 13 Times Faster Under President Bush Than It Did Under
President Clinton; Fastest Recorded Since 1960. According to
the Heritage Foundations analysis of White House Historical Budget
Numbers, Federal Spending per household grew the highest under
President George W. Bush, to $22,630 in 2007 dollars. This was a jump
of $2,590, the highest jump among all the presidents since John F.
Kennedy in 1960. Growth in per household spending grew only $194 under
President Bill Clinton, the smallest recorded increase. [Heritage
Foundation Analysis, heritage.org, accessed 9/3/08]

RHETORIC:
“I spent 25 years in the private sector. I’ve done business in many
foreign countries. I know why jobs come and why they go away. And I
know that liberals don’t have a clue.”

REALITY: ROMNEY’S FIRM LAID OFF NEARLY 400 WORKERS

Romney’s Firm Reaped $100 Million While Bain Laid Off 385 Workers and Plunged Ampad into Bankruptcy.
In 1992, the Mitt Romney-run Bain Capital invested $5 million into the
purchase of American Pad & Paper (Ampad) from Mead Corp., which, at
the time, had $11.3 million in debt and sales of $106.7 million.
By 1999, Bain had closed two Ampad plants, laid off 385 Ampad workers,
and plunged the company $392 million into debt. Controversy
surrounding the layoffs in Indiana derailed Romney’s failed U.S. Senate
bid in 1994, and more angry workers haunted his run for governor of
Massachusetts in 2002. Allegations of insider trading conspiracy
surfaced in 1998 as a result of optimistic financial forecasts
published in Ampad’s annual report in 1997, despite sales repeatedly
slipping for Ampad–including a loss of $78 million in 1998–as hefty
returns for Bain investors rolled in. Heavy acquisitions, foreign
price competition, and debt eventually sunk Ampad, and creditors forced
it into bankruptcy in 2000. All told, Bain partners and its
investors had made over $100 million. [The Boston Globe, 6/26/07]

Obama answers the question quite effectively.

According to Senator John McCain and Phil Gramm, foreclosures, high gas prices, the jobless rate, high food prices and people picking through their sofa pillows for change (the kind McCain believes in), is symptomatic of our imaginary need to be negative.

Seriously, he is trying to tell us all that we’re just imagining a bad economy, that those bills piling up next to the checkbook in my dining room that have doubled in some cases are just figments of my own worried imagination.

John McCain, what crack are you smoking exactly? While I’m trying to figure out how to pay the same bills I had last year which are now twice as much in some cases, you’re calling me a….WHAT?

Yes, Phil Gramm, McCain’s surrogate, is saying we’re all a bunch of whiners inventing a ‘mental recession’. That 2,000 point dip in the stock market? Nah, not to worry about it, because we’re all just whining, imagining, and living in a different reality than Gramm/Bush/McCain. Or vice versa.

First, a few facts about Phil Gramm. As one of the architects of the undoing of the Glass-Steagall Act, which permitted brokers and bankers to blend mortgage and securities into these incredible subprime funds, Gramm owns a large part of the problem. Not only that, but after razing the walls that kept mortgages separate from securities, he went to work as a lobbyist for UBS, one of the primary marketers of those very same subprime mortgages and one of the brokerage houses clamoring for US bailout assistance.

The folks who got caught in the spiked rates were funding investors’ gains — gains in the funds Gramm was lobbying for and profiting from.

Isn’t it conveeeeenient for Phil Gramm to tell the VICTIMS of his scam that they’re WHINERS? And McCain is no better, endorsing the statements Gramm makes about our current economy being a ‘mental recession’.

There is no question that the state of the economy is far beyond imaginary distress. When real people are losing their homes, unable to keep their utilities on, can’t afford the gas to commute to work, are skipping meals or buying carb-laden fast food because it’s cheaper than nutritious food, we have a problem that far transcends our imaginations or ‘mental outlook’.

This is a classic Bush strategy. When George Bush doesn’t want to deal with real facts, he comes out and just tells us all over and over again that we’re not having a problem, we’re not in a recession, we’re winning the war (whatever that means), we’re seeing success in Iraq, and hey, here’s a stimulus check to stimulate the imaginary sluggish economy.

Where is the mainstream media in this? After the media firestorm about ‘Bittergate’, where is the outcry over “whiners”? I assure you, I am no more a whiner than McCain is a woman, either in imagination or reality.

Women and working class white folk who seem to have an Obama aversion, take note. Your candidate is either calling you delusional or stupid. Take your pick.

How much more of a hit can people take? The future looks extremely bleak to me. Bernie, I am so frightened for next year, as I struggle daily this year. I drive past the gas stations and see the price go up! Those prices are going up even 10 cents a gallon in one day!

What about heating fuel next year? I spent this winter with my heat turned down to 53 degrees, varying it only for a few hours after I returned home from work. I have my master’s degree and am a teacher. I am struggling so hard in my new home. It’s a double wide and I’ve waited 50 years to get my own home. Now, I am worried I won’t be able to keep it as everything else is going up, except my salary, which next year will only go up slightly more than 1 percent. The middle class is no longer the middle class…I’ve slipped into the lower class after a winter of double heating costs and now these new economic hits.

How much more of a hit can people take? The future looks extremely bleak to me. I worry constantly about how I am going to pay my bills.