Stop playing around with public pension plans

It may be that the only thing worse than doing nothing about public pension plans is doing something about them. The latest 'something', according to rating company Standard & Poor's (S&P), is switching from defined-benefit to defined-contribution systems. The company published a report on the subject in the US, 'Public Employers Are Exploring a Switch to Defined Contribution Pension Plans', in November. You may remember how this defined-contribution business swept through the US private sector more than two decades ago. We are doing away with the stodgy old defined-benefit pension plan...