An interesting piece in the New York Times discusses the possibility that the United States may never return to the rate of economic growth that existed for long periods of time before the recent recession.

Demographics are considered as the source of this detachment from long-term growth trends.  Specifically, slower growth is related to declining rates of growth in the work force, and lower employment growth is tied to slower population growth and fewer women entering the labor market.

In a recent and highly recommended Bloomberg op-ed, Carmen Reinhart discusses the options available to governments and central banks when attempting to deal with the burden of enormous amounts of public and private debt.

Reinhart suggests that the preferred policy option for many governments--including the United States--is a form of stealth taxation that amounts to financial repression.

A recent article published in the Financial Analysts Journal examines the relationship between demographics and both economic growth and capital market returns.

The authors—Robert Arnott and Denis Chaves—use a new econometric technique to confirm a strong link between demographic trends and: excess (in excess of returns on domestic cash) stock market returns; excess bond market returns, and; real per capita gross domestic product (GDP).

The Association of British Insurers announced that the organization will adopt a new code of conduct that could have a meaningful impact on annuity sales.

The decision is in response to criticisms of annuity industry sales processes.  Critics have argued that current industry practices are inconsistent and opaque, and that this confusing annuity shopping environment ends-up costing financial services consumers real money. 

The world is filled with investing indexes and benchmarks, and all professional investment managers measure their results relative to some type of performance standard such as the S&P 500.

On the retirement income front, though, similar gauges of performance are virtually non-existent.  The lack of a baseline performance measure is a problem for the industry because there is no established basis for comparison of asset decumulation strategies.