Why do we need still more DC?

DC: It's a very old idea that the Committee of Two thought was just what was needed now as a retirement plan for new hires at UC. UC actually has long had a small DC plan plus 403b/457b options for employees that operate like DC plans. Did we really need more? Maybe for the excitement as per below?

Enjoying your DC?

And if you were hoping that you would get insight into the current slide from the news media in managing your DC plan, you might consider, Michael Hiltzik's column in today's LA Times:

"The Dow is trying to stage a recovery here." That's what I heard an anchorperson say on CNBC around 9 a.m. Monday (noon Eastern time). It was as distilled an indication as one could want of why no normal investor should be anywhere near the financial news network during frenetic trading days like this. 

It came as no surprise that many viewers' attention was riveted on CNBC on Monday, given the breadth and severity of the stock market decline Friday. But the remark pointed to one of the problems with CNBC as a source of financial information for the average investor. Personifying the financial markets as entities with will or desire, like human beings or dogs, will inevitably lead investors astray, especially on days like Monday when what appear to be cataclysmic events might prompt the easily spooked into stampeding for the exits. It's time to look at your children's funds; it's time to look at your 529 [college savings] plans.- A rare bit of good advice from CNBC's Jim Cramer on Monday

Yet it was the theme of CNBC's coverage all day: "Stocks staging a stunning comeback," declared anchor Amanda Drury around 1:45 p.m. Eastern. A few hours later, one of her colleagues, sounding like a play-by-play announcer at the World Cup, announced that the Dow Jones  industrial average were "trying to recover from an early 1,000-point plunge."

The truth, obviously, is that as the reflection of millions of individual investment decisions along with algorithm-based trading, the markets don't "stage" anything. Viewing the trading day in the same terms as the running of a horse in the Kentucky Derby or a ball club aiming for a Wild Card berth is a fundamental error. (In the event, the stock market disappointed itself Monday, "staging" several efforts to recover but ultimately closing with a loss of 77.68 points or nearly 4% in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index and 588.47 points, or more than 3.5%, in the Dow industrials.) ...

Full column available at http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-market-turmoil-and-the-problem-of-cnbc-20150824-column.html

What Hiltzik said about Monday's pop financial advice was even more on offer today when the market was said to be doing more "staging" - until it didn't.