There are only two reasons you appear on the cover of Time magazine—either you are receiving plaudits from the media, or you’re about to be tarred and feathered. 401(k)s are featured on the cover of Time this week, and it’s not because they’ve been named “plan of the year.”
We Google, we Tweet, we LinkIn, we “friend” each other, and we log on to the Internet at ever-increasing rates.
Findings from the Pew Internet and American Life Project have shown that our current economic woes have carried over into our online activities: In the past year, among American Internet users, 72% of men and 67% of women went online seeking news or advice about coping with the recession. People are conversing through online channels as well: 23% of the U.S. adult population have discussed the recession online.
I realize this will be about my third post on this issue, but the things people are writing about 401(k)s just get more and more absurd, and it’s tough to sit by and let this go unchallenged.
Now the editors of The New York Times are claiming that “Even with recent stock market upswings, account balances are roughly 25 percent lower than before the crash.”
Steve Utkus, one of my fellow bloggers, wrote recently about the dubious value of a local radio station’s early-morning reports on where the S&P 500 and Nasdaq markets are likely to open the day, based on futures trading. He labeled it “junk news.”
Since this is a “summer of sequels” at the cinema, I’d like to add my own sequel to Steve’s blog post.
A piece that aired last week on “60 Minutes” has gotten some attention and a lot of play from those arguing that a retirement system based on 401(k)s or other investment accounts is fundamentally broken.
But I couldn’t disagree more completely with the data, inferences, and conclusions in this report—and I was pretty irked by some of the misrepresentations in the program. (Does shouting at the screen and stomping around the room count as “irked”?)
