Search results for ""Author Martin Neil Baily""

A comprehensive plan from two leading experts on how to fix America's outdated retirement system America's retirement system has serious problems. While it works well for some retirees, millions of others don't have the sound retirement they have worked decades to secure. Roughly 40 percent of today's $4 trillion federal budget is devoted to supporting retirees, which will grow to roughly half over the next decade-imperiling the sustainability of the whole system. The system is out of date. It reflects the America of a bygone age--an era in which company or union pensions provided middle-class families a decent standard of living in retirement. In America today, however, private pensions have mostly disappeared, Social Security is threatened to go insolvent, people are living longer, and health care costs continue to rise. Poorer retirees now must choose between buying enough to eat and their prescription drugs. In The Retirement Challenge, influential former White House economists Martin Neil Baily and Benjamin H. Harris explore America's outdated retirement system and explain how improving retirement requires changes by families, employers, and policymakers alike. Households need to save more, get smarter about their finances, and trade part of their 401(k) balances for insurance products. Companies need to take a more active role in their workers' retirements. And lawmakers need to amend the tax code, Social Security, and a host of other programs. Despite today's wide political divide, policymakers from both parties can come together around changes that will promote a stable retirement. This book shows that these changes do not represent a radical overhaul. If families, businesses, and policymakers do their part, everyone-current retirees and future generations-can enjoy a much more secure and prosperous retirement.

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The financial crisis of 2008 devastated the American economy and caused U.S. policymakers to rethink their approaches to major financial crises. More than five years have passed since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, but questions still persist about the best ways to avoid and respond to future financial crises. In Across the Great Divide, a copublication with Brookings Institution, contributing economic and legal scholars from academia, industry, and government analyze the financial crisis of 2008, from its causes and effects on the U.S. economy to the way ahead. The expert contributors consider postcrisis regulatory policy reforms and emerging financial and economic trends, including the roles played by highly accommodative monetary policy, securitization run amok, government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), large asset bubbles, excessive leverage, and the Federal funds rate, among other potential causes. They discuss the role played by the Federal Reserve and examine the concept of “too big to fail.” And they review and assess resolution frameworks, considering experiences with Lehman Bros. and other firms in the crisis, Title II of the Dodd-Frank Act, and the Chapter 14 bankruptcy code proposal.

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