The realization that the retirement money of middle-class workers should not be invested in crazy expensive hedge funds is now hardening into conventional wisdom.

Today, more evidence that pensions are a slow-moving disaster that will in your lifetime consume our nation like the inexorable creep of hot lava down a volcano’s edge consumes everything in its path.

Are you planning to retire with a pension? I’m sorry to hear that.

Pensions are good. Pensions are worth preserving until something better comes along. But pensions that make impossible promises and cultivate lies are not the pensions we should hope for.

Recently, a study found that North Carolina’s $90 billion state pension fund was wasting billions of dollars on Wall Street fees for no good reason. Now, there is a new reason to dislike this ineptly managed corruption of the public trust!

New York City’s $60 billion civil employees pension fund has just decided to drop all of its investments in hedge funds. That’s the sound of one more nail being hammered into a coffin.

Perhaps the best reason to worry about Wall Street money managers ripping off investors is that most of those investors are regular people—via retirement plans. The extent of the Wall Street skim is truly shocking.

Most people don’t have pensions to look forward to in retirement any more. But don’t be jealous of those who do—their pensions are seriously fucked.

The enormous pension fund Calpers, which recently stopped investing in hedge funds, says it will cut in half the number of outside investment managers it employs in order to reduce the fees it pays to Wall Street. Shoddily managed state pension funds across America, take note.

We were flabbergasted as well as flummoxed to learn recently that New York City’s pension funds have paid billions of dollars in fees to Wall Street money managers over the past decade. Is there, perhaps, a better way for public officials to manage your retirement money?

Consider public pensions. The money that firefighters and police and government workers will use in retirement. Two facts: 1) Wall Street is stealing this money, and 2) We are letting them, like fucking suckers.

As you may have heard, Americans are living longer these days, and that is a huge pain in the ass for pension plans, which would greatly prefer if you died young, for financial reasons. The scope of this "staying alive" problem is now coming into clear view.

The fact that the statement "governments should be legally required to make pension contributions every year" is controversial is just the latest reminder that it's time to blow up America's horrible pension system.

Over 250,000 Japanese citizens aged 100 years or more are "missing," a nationwide inquiry finds.