Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Do they know what happens to bond values when interest rates go up?--------------Bonds captivate $16 trillion of pensions

No worries.
If they belly up, the taxpayer will borrow the money from China, put it in the kid's tab and pay the moochers.
What a country!
Bonds captivate $16 trillion of pensions | Crain's Detroit Business:
"Risk off:
"They're taking more equity risk off the table" with fixed-income securities as their funding status improves, Zorast Wadia, an analyst at Milliman, said in a telephone interview. "Pension plans don't want to give back the gains that essentially took over five years to accumulate."

Public and private pension funds in the U.S. added $117 billion of debt securities in the three months ended in September on an annualized basis and sold $135 billion of equities, according to Fed data released on Dec. 9.

The disparity was the greatest since 2008 when comparing third-quarter data on an annual basis.

About 70 percent of companies with defined-benefit plans, or those that provide workers with retirement income based on employment length or salary level, may increase their share of long-term debt securities and other rate-sensitive investments by 2015, based on a November report by Towers Watson, a New York-based pension advisory firm."

No comments: