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Pension funds have fantastical expectations of the market

With U.S. stocks at all-time highs, it’s more important than ever that investors be brutally realistic about future returns.

You can learn a lot from these folks — if you listen to them and then do the opposite.

A viral tweet claims that impeaching President Donald Trump for a second time would mean he would lose the ability to run for president in 2024. That's not true. Nor are other claims in the tweet.

The tweet was posted on Friday, two days after a Capitol insurrection by a mob of Trump supporters sparked a new impeachment push from House Democrats.

It says the following: "For those wondering if it's worth impeaching him this time, it means he: 1) loses his 200k+ pension for the rest of his life2) loses his 1 million dollar/year travel allowanceRead More3) loses lifetime full secret service detail

Moving quickly to envelop Crimea in the Russian bureaucracy and economy, the Kremlin said Monday that it had nearly doubled pensions paid to retirees on the peninsula, raising them to the average levels paid in Russia.

President Vladimir V. Putin signed a decree raising pensions and another increasing salaries for public sector workers like teachers and doctors, according to a statement posted on the Kremlin’s website. Officials also announced a number of new investment plans and tax breaks for Crimea, which Russia seized from Ukraine two weeks ago after a rushed vote in the Crimean Legislature. The Crimeans even realigned the clock, moving theirs ahead two hours, to be identical with Moscow’s time zone.

the German government released a statement saying Mr. Putin told Chancellor Angela Merkel in a telephone call that he had ordered a partial withdrawal of Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s eastern border, a source of great tension with Western governments in recent weeks.

The Atlantic Home todaysDate();Monday, March 7, 2011Monday, March 7, 2011 Go Follow the Atlantic » Politics Presented by The Rise and Fall of John Ensign Chris Good Sarah Palin Feud Watch Tina Dupuy In Wisconsin, the Mood Turns Against Compromise Natasha Vargas-Cooper Business Presented by Credit Card Balances Resume Their Decline Daniel Indiviglio 5 Ways the Value of College Is Growing Derek Thompson America's 401(k)'s Are a Mess, Are Its Pensions? Megan McArdle Culture Presented By 'Spy' Magazine's Digital Afterlife Bill Wyman http://as

To many on the right, this inequality is a non-issue, and in an abstract sense, I agree. Penalizing people for their success does not help the less successful. But at a time of real sacrifice, it does seem to me important for conservatives not to ignore the dangers of growing and vast inequality - for political, not economic, reasons. And by political, I don't mean partisan. I mean a genuine concern for the effects of an increasingly unequal society.

it increasingly seems wrong to me to exempt the very wealthy from sacrifice, in the context of their gains in the last three decades, if we are to ask it of everyone else. It's not about fairness. It isn't even really about redistribution, as we once understood that from the hard left. It's about political stability and cohesion and coherence. Without a large and strong middle class, we can easily become more divided, more bitter and more unstable. Concern about that is a legitimate conservative issue. And if someone on the right does not find a way to address it, someone on the left may well be empowered to over-reach.

stranded assets. That's how business people refer to these vast, idling industrial infrastructures. It's abandoned property that will have to be written off in a company's balance sheets before the end of its planned lifetime.

Germany has been twisting and turning over its phaseout of coal and lignite power plants over the past five years. Originally, it planned to stop using coal in its energy mix in 2038. Then the current government accelerated that goal by eight years to 2030. Recently, some politicians have called that decision into question.

The earlier phaseout plan could lose operating companies €11.6 billion ($12.5 billion), according to a 2022 study by Dresden University.

The House passed a $1.9 trillion coronavirus-relief bill and sent it to President Biden for his signature, with Democrats muscling an expansive round of new spending and antipoverty measures through Congress just as America begins to emerge from a year of pandemic-related shutdowns.

The vote was 220 to 211, with all GOP lawmakers and one Democrat, Rep. Jared Golden of Maine, voting against the bill.

Major expansions to several aid programs for low-income Americans will be temporary under the bill, though Democrats hope to make them permanent later in a broader effort to expand the federal safety net

one of the great divides of modern politics: young versus old. In Britain, age is now a better predictor of voting intention than social class. Overall, the Boomers voted for Brexit in 2016 and the Conservatives in 2017; their Millennial children voted Remain and Labour.

The debate is also about so much more than abstract disagreements over policy and government funding.

Caring for the elderly, for example, becomes wrapped up in assertions of “just deserts”—I’ve worked hard all my life and paid my taxes—and fears about money-grubbing children selling off their parents’ houses. It is also, like taxes on inheritance, a subject that prods at many people’s deep desire to pass something on to their offspring.

he number of babies born in China last year fell to a nearly six-decade low, exacerbating a looming demographic crisis that is set to reshape the world’s most populous nation and threaten its economic vitality.

About 14.6 million babies were born in China in 2019, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. That was a nearly 4 percent fall from the previous year, and the lowest official number of births in China since 1961

Births in China have now fallen for three years in a row. They had risen slightly in 2016, a year after the government ended its one-child policy and allowed couples to have two children, a shift that officials hoped would drive a sustained increase in the number of newborns. But that has not materialized.

The work and pensions secretary Mel Stride caused controversy on Thursday by suggesting over-50s should take up food delivery work, after Deliveroo recorded a 62% increase in couriers over 50 since 2021.

After the controversy – which saw the TUC accuse Stride of “glorifying the gig economy” – the Guardian spoke to Chris, a 57-year-old courier based in London.

“I started riding for Deliveroo in 2019 after a contract ended. I’m just constantly tired. Mel Stride made it sound like you can just log on and find an order, but there’s so much waiting around that you don’t get paid for. Often I’m waiting on my bike an hour for an order. I’ll be sitting there next to 17 other riders. It’s like a waiter or waitress only being paid when they deliver food to the table,” he said.

We cannot continue to offer healthcare free at the point of use. Those (like me) who can pay should be charged. We cannot expect to inherit our elderly parents’ houses and so require the state to pay for their old-age care. We middle classes have no right to enjoy rail travel vastly subsidised by the general taxpayer. I have no right to an old person’s London travel card saving me thousands a year when young people on a tenth of my salary must pay — nor to a winter fuel allowance.

The taxpayer should not be subsidising public-school education for the small minority who benefit from it. Pensioners should not, regardless of our wealth, expect increases in our pensions that exceed the increases working people get. Britain should not be merrily promising substantial increases in defence spending when we already shoulder a disproportionate burden in the defence of freedom.

Year on year we are loading bigger national bills on to the ever-smaller proportion of the population who are actually working. People are retiring earlier then demanding to be kept expensively alive for longer

The world is at a startling demographic milestone. Sometime soon, the global fertility rate will drop below the point needed to keep population constant. It may have already happened.

Fertility is falling almost everywhere, for women across all levels of income, education and labor-force participation.

Governments have rolled out programs to stop the decline—but so far they’ve barely made a dent.

Over the past few days, The New York Times has published several terrifying reports about New Jersey’s system of halfway houses — privately run adjuncts to the regular system of prisons

The horrors described are part of a broader pattern in which essential functions of government are being both privatized and degraded.

you really need to see it in the broader context of a nationwide drive on the part of America’s right to privatize government functions, very much including the operation of prisons. What’s behind this drive?

Today, however, Europe is talking about “the French question”: can the Socialist government of President François Hollande pull France out of its slow decline and prevent it from slipping permanently into Europe’s second tier?

At stake is whether a social democratic system that for decades prided itself on being the model for providing a stable and high standard of living for its citizens can survive the combination of globalization, an aging population and the acute fiscal shocks of recent years.

France’s friends, Germany in particular, fear that Mr. Hollande may simply lack the political courage to confront his allies and make the necessary decisions.

About one in 11 Americans age 50 and older lacks a spouse, partner or living child, census figures and other research show. That amounts to about eight million people in the U.S. without close ki

The University of Chicago’s General Social Survey, which has tracked American attitudes since 1972, asked respondents four years ago how often they lacked companionship, felt left out and felt isolated from others. Baby boomers said they experienced these feelings with greater frequency than any other generation, including the older “silent generation.”

More senior women than men are kinless because women’s life expectancies are nearly five years longer, at 81 years. Of Americans age 50 and over in 2016, 27% of women were widowed or never married, compared with 16% of men. Women are also less likely to cohabitate and date later in life, research shows

Louis XII became king of France by accident. Or, more precisely, because of an accident. On April 7th 1498, his cousin, the reigning monarch Charles VIII, stumbled and hit his head on the lintel of a doorway through which he was passing on his way to watch a tennis match in the royal chateau at Amboise. The king had recently been ill. He seemed to be recovering but this final blow in a life full of hard knocks finished him off. Having no surviving male heir, the crown passed to his nearest male relative, Louis duke of Orleans, who was crowned king in Rheims cathedral on 27 May 1498

Louis ended his reign having reformed the French legal system, reduced taxes, having enjoyed some military success in Italy and bearing the loving accolade, 'Father of the People'. In many respects he stands comparison with his contemporary, Henry VII of England

Louis was born in 1462 during the reign of his second cousin Louis XI. His father was Charles duke of Orleans, a celebrated poet and the head of a cadet branch of the royal house of Valois. Louis XI was succeeded by his son, Charles VIII, in 1483

Even as cultural values are in rapid flux, political institutions seem frozen in time. The average U.S. state constitution is more than 100 years old. We are in the third-longest period without a constitutional amendment in American history

what’s to blame for this institutional aging?

One possibility is simply that Americans got older. The average American was 32 years old in 2000, and 37 in 2018.

labor leaders are proclaiming Joseph R. Biden Jr. to be the most union-friendly president of their lifetime — and “maybe ever,” as Steve Rosenthal, a former political director for the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said in an interview.

He has pushed through legislation sending hundreds of billions of dollars to cities and states, aid that public-sector unions consider essential, and tens of billions to shore up union pension plans.

Yet Mr. Rosenthal and other labor advocates confess to a gnawing anxiety: Despite Mr. Biden’s remarkable support for their movement, unions may not be much better off when he leaves office than when he entered it.

The victors were a group of parties of a new-left coalition, Apruebo Dignidad (I Approve Dignity), which elected 28 representatives, and numerous independent candidates who had been active in the ongoing protests calling for reforms in education, health and pensions, and an end to the neoliberal economic model that has dominated Chile for almost half a century

The independent, left and center-left candidates secured a combined 101 seats, more than two-thirds of the Constitutional Convention. They would have enough power to propose broad economic reforms to land and water rights, the pensions system and the exploitation of natural resources. Chile is one of the most unequal countries among advanced economies.

All signs indicate that the foundational document they will draft will enshrine principles of civic participation, justice, gender equality and Indigenous rights that have long eluded this South American nation.

President Donald Trump has been impeached again -- the first leader in US history to be impeached twice by the House.

Impeachment in a two-part process. The House introduces and passes the articles of impeachment, but the Senate is where the person being impeached faces a trial -- and potential punishment.

The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present. (Article 1, Section 3)

Police in Paris were forced to call for backup on Friday as dozens of protesters outside a theater tried to storm the building and reach President Emmanuel Macron.

Riot police holding up shields formed a line against the protesters, who shouted "Macron, out," in the latest of more than a month of protests against the embattled President's pension reform plans. The President and his wife, Brigitte Macron, "were secured" for several minutes but were able to return and finish watching "The Fly," French news agency AFP reported, citing sources from the President's office.

Protests across France over pension reforms have hit fuel and power supplies, and cause large-scale transport disruption and the shutdown of schools. Macron says the changes are necessary to make the system fairer and more sustainable, but unions say workers will lose out.