Spot the Reporter's Bias

I noticed that too. All those layers of fact-checking and editing are doing an excellent job of insuring an objective presentation of the facts - NOT.

How about the fact that the "guaranteed" benefit is subject to trivial concerns such as an actual ability to come up with the money?

But so far, those benefits do appear to be guaranteed. It is taxpayers who end up picking up the tab! (Of course, your point is well taken: at some point, if we aren't there already, money will completely run out and benefits will be nil.)

Whims? Is that the best she could do? Why not "subject to the complete and utter chaos of the dangerous global financial complex"?

It seems that by using the term, "whims" she is implying that the market is some kind of moral (or immoral?) agent or an agent with a will who can determine arbitrarily (perhaps implicating unjustly) people's pension benefits. Does anyone else interpret this passage this way?

@M.R. Orlowski,
I see your point. It was bad enough without that interpretation, but that interpretation makes it even worse.

Those whimsical markets, who needs to listen to them anyway?

Unfortunately for Ms Williams, all of us including herself and govt retirees must be subject to one of the following: market whims, voters' whims, or the whims of Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

I'm more worried about government whims.

Which is a pretty good example of why Joseph Galloway (co-author of "We were soldiers once and young" and a long-time reporter with Knight-Ritter) says journalists shouldn't go to Journalism School! I'd be very surprised if Ms Williams... ah, words fail me.

But a few courses in Econ and Finance wouldn't be -- pardon the really rotten put -- amiss.

Bias or the new normal?

I want my retirement guaranteed! I want to live a risk-free existence! I want to suffer no ill consequences whatsoever at any point in my lifetime!

It's the darn free-marketeers who are taking my guarantees away from me!