07.10.2008 - Spotlight falls on the nature and worth of the buffer funds
From FT: Much attention has been directed to sovereign wealth funds as the new big players in financial markets. Less has been written about their cousins, sovereign pension funds in spite of calculations from Morgan Stanley that those from western Europe, the US and Japan alone have $4,400bn (£2,437bn, €3,062bn) in assets, far more than the $2,600bn held by SWFs. SPFs are buffer funds, most established in the past 15 years, to build up reserves against the cost of unfunded state retirement benefits in the decades ahead. They merit individual scrutiny because several are far from similar in character or investment. The largest SPF in the G10, according to Morgan Stanley, is the $1,900bn Social Security Trust fund of the US, which is entirely comprised of bonds from the federal government...... Full Article: Source
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