I wasn’t quite sure what to do about Five Favorites for Friday this week, given that today is an unofficial holiday, Black Friday. I couldn’t move it up a day, as that would require publishing it on an actual national holiday, Thanksgiving.

And I didn’t want to move it up to the middle of the week, to Wednesday, because then it would be Five Favorites for Wednesday, which lacks the alliteration that is central to my interest in writing it! See here.

I was stuck until one of my favorite newsletters, from NPR’s Planet Money, landed in my in-box this week, and showed the way – this week, it used a theme of identifying articles for which its writers were thankful. And once I saw that, I knew how to handle this week’s Five Favorites for Friday post. So here, to give you something to read while waiting in line on Friday at the mall, are five articles or podcasts I am thankful for this week and why.

1. For the first, I go right to the inspiration for today’s list, NPR’s Planet Money newsletter, and its very first article, which is about an economics paper addressing the correlation between the cost and requirement of having car seats and the number of children in a family. The story points at the extent to which the underlying financial costs of family size directly impact family size. Why is this relevant to the subjects of this blog? Because the question of being able to fund and afford a secure retirement many decades down the road plays much the same role in determining family size and parental preference in that regard, particularly as pensions have vanished and the burden has shifted to the employee to amass the capital needed to fund retirement income at the same time the employee has to incur the long tail costs of raising children. Family size and retirement security are not unrelated, just as child car seat regulations and family size are not unrelated. Those of you who have read my posts about borrowing from the concepts of behavioral economics for use in lawyering, know that I like interesting and not obvious lessons from economics – and I am thankful for coming across this one during the three days running up to the holiday.
2. I am very thankful for this recent WTW publication explaining the current status of pension risk transfers. I have worked on them and think, in the right circumstances, they have a lot of value and are an appropriate fiduciary action, but in other circumstances and given certain variables, that may not always be the case. There is an awful lot of litigation, potential litigation, transaction volume and potential future systemic financial risk at play in them at this point, however, so having a functional understanding of the transaction and the issues is important. I am thankful for this article as it provides any interested reader with a fairly substantive understanding of the transaction.
3. But where in the world did pension risk transfers even come from? And what market forces and regulatory changes were necessary to give rise to them? It’s a fascinating question and one that would require a deep historical dive to figure out. And so I am thankful for this great piece by Steve Keating tracing the entire 50 year history leading up to the current state of play on this issue.
4. Litigation around pension risk transfers, and theories of how or why liability could exist in such a transaction, is robust. The primary concern or argument is whether the loss of ERISA protections once the pensions have been replaced by annuities places the former plan participants at financial risk in a manner that holding a pension under a plan did not. One way of looking at this question is to consider the existence of PBGC protection, and whether it continues after the transaction turning the pensions into annuities. There is a good argument that PBGC protection should remain in force and I am thankful for this excellent paper by Ivins, Phillips and Barker attorneys Kevin O’Brien and Spencer Walters that makes the case as to why.
5. It’s behind a paywall (which isn’t something I am thankful for, but I happen to be a subscriber) but I am thankful for Bloomberg’s series of articles and a podcast raising the question of whether the role of private equity and insurers in the handling of retirement funds, including in pension risk transfers is safe or instead poses systemic risk. I am thankful for it because, frankly, you should read the whole series and then decide for yourself what you think about it.