While the nation focuses on the financial market reform bill, less attention is on a critical pension provision that will be a lifeline for American employers.  On June 25th, the President signed legislation to help private sector employers struggling to recover from the worst financial crisis of our lifetime.

With the Federal Reserve’s newly-released Flow of Funds data for 2009, we can take a fresh look at how pension funds are investing.

Let’s hope so. This month, NIRS held its inaugural policy conference, “Raising the Bar:  Policy Solutions for Improving Retirement Security” in Washington, D.C. to examine just this issue.

When President Obama delivers the State of the Union address, a major focus likely will be jobs.  Although the unemployment rate seems to have stabilized in recent months, roughly one in ten Americans actively looking for a job cannot find one.