Adam Taggart | Thoughtful Money, Released on 4/23/25

America’s pensions are in big trouble. Many are underfunded vs their payout commitments. Many are being recklessly managed, overinvested in far too speculative assets for the safety of their constituents. Ted Siedle is a former SEC attorney. His firm, Benchmark Financial Services, Inc. has pioneered over $1 trillion in forensic investigations of the money management industry. He’s nationally recognized as an authority on pensions and investment management matters, having testified before the Senate Banking Committee regarding fund scandals and is an expert in various Madoff-related and other litigations. In 2017, he secured the largest SEC whistleblower award in history of $48 million, and in 2018, the largest CFTC award in history at $30 million. Join me and Stephany Pomboy as we interview Ted and take your questions live.

0:00 – Impending retirement crisis warning
2:26 – State of public pensions & mismanagement concerns
7:00 – Wall Street’s exploitation of pensions as “dumb money”
10:32 – Risks of alternative assets & high fees
18:02 – Leverage in pension investments amplifying risks
21:02 – Illiquidity & lockups delaying pension crisis
23:05 – Potential triggers
29:06 – Unaddressed fraud despite investigations
33:28 – Potential for federal bailouts.
36:00 – Social tensions from pension bailouts
43:06 – PBGC’s refusal to recover looted pension funds
47:02 – State budget pressures & underfunding thresholds
49:44 – Hidden risks in opaque fees & exotic investments
53:41 – Abuse at the beneficiary level
57:20 – Protecting pension participants from risks
1:02:44 – Most-needed reforms

Stephanie Pomboy is an economist and founder of the economic research firm MacroMavens. Before launching her firm, Pomboy worked as a managing director at an independent economic research firm ISI Group from 1991 to 2002. She provided timely financial insight and analysis to the country’s most sophisticated and largest institutions. Then, she began her career at Cyrus J. Lawrence LLC’s investment management company after earning a bachelor’s degree in 1990. Pomboy spent over a decade working with Ed Hyman and Nancy Lazar at ISI Group and Cyrus J. Lawrence LLC. In addition, Pomboy hosts a joint podcast called The Super Terrific Happy Hour with Grant Williams of Things That Make You Go Hmmm… newsletter.

Adam Taggart is the Founder of  Thoughtful Money. He is also Co-Founder and former President of Peak Prosperity. Adam is an experienced Silicon Valley internet executive and Stanford MBA. Prior to partnering with Chris Martenson (Adam was General Manager of our earlier site, ChrisMartenson.com), he was a Vice President at Yahoo!, a company he served for nine years. Before that, he did the ‘startup thing’ (mySimon.com, sold to CNET in 2001). As a fresh-faced graduate from Brown University in the early 1990s, Adam got a first-hand look at all that was broken with Wall Street as an investment banking analyst for Merrill Lynch. Most importantly, he’s a devoted husband and dad.

  economy, pension crisis, retirement, Stephanie Pomboy, Ted Siedle