I never believed that market investment was a way to ensure pensions universally (or almost universally). In the long run, the percentage of substantial benefactors cannot be high. And it is certainly not the way to meet demographic waves: boomers actually compete among themselves, so they overpay for stocks but would retrieve less value. And besides, one market crash in the long period before retirement is enough to be left with nothing. But while everything seems to be working (as with CDOs), it is hard to convince.

The Bush Social Security plan (or, in fact, any inviting enthusiasm about stock market) is just a trick to suck people's savings into Wall Street. People can't get richer retirement all together with more intermediaries and higher administrative costs.