The latter part of last week was spent in Washington DC where I attended a fascinating conference hosted by the Retirement Security Project at the Brookings Institute on Australian and International Pensions Reform: Lessons for the United States
Speakers included the Australian assistant treasurer Nick Sherry, deputy assistant treasury secretary for retirement and health policy at the US Treasury Mark Iwry, president and chief executive of the Employee benefits Research Institute Dallas Salisbury, and Tor Financial's David Harris.
Anyway it transpires from the conference that the Australians and the Americans are all pretty pleased with themselves. The Aussies, while smarting over the cricket, can point to a nation of savers who all contribute at least 9% of their wages towards their retirement.
And Mark Iwry declared himself happy with the overall state of US retirement savings, though he admitted more work could be done. Also, from a UK perspective, the good news is that he declared auto-enrolment in the US a success.
However, Nick Sherry did admit that one of the main reasons why compulsory superannuation remained popular in Australia was that from the point it was launched, up till the current financial crisis, there had been a pretty much unbroken run of positive investment results. Had it been launched today the story may have been different.
In addition the Australians are also facing up to around six million lost accounts. Now, in a nation of around 22 million that's not bad going. I look forward to what we can achieve in this respect. Especially as approximately two million of us don't even have bank accounts.
I also noted that regardless of geography, all pension funds were having a torrid time when it comes to their investment portfolios. Take the Californian Public Employee Retirement Scheme (CalPERS) who are, according to The LA Times, set to lose in the region of $56bn. Now, I know this is a terrible joke, but have they looked down the back of the sofa?
Finally, I am delighted that Robin Ellison's decision to stand as an independent MP and my decision to act as his agent has attracted so much attention. While most of the comments I have received have been of a positive nature, with offers of canvassing and even an offer to supply rosettes (when we agree on what colour they should be), we clearly have some people rattled, as witnessed in the letter to the editor next to this column.
While Mr Evans may well be correct in most of what he says about my knowledge of politics and indeed political history, I wonder if perhaps he is concerned at the influence a strong independent candidate could have in such a tightly contested constituency.
