People can currently buy fixed-term annuities that enable them to benefit from improving annuity rates further down the line and they can also use a combination of fixed-term annuities, income drawdown and phased retirement plans to run "mixed" pension arrangements with some annual income through their annuity and the rest of their savings invested – another suggestion from Mr Webb.
Some, such as Aviva's Mixed Investment pension fund, showed a small fall on Friday and Monday, but subsequently recovered.
Others will be a reform of the civil service, which makes up 26% of the workforce; a check on spiralling health costs; and, prompted by demographic necessity, bringing private-sector funds into the pension mix.
They would do this by firing public sector workers, scapegoating teachers, closing libraries, upping tuition fees, rolling back union contracts, creating rush privatisations of public assets and decreasing pensions – mix the cocktail for where you live.
Using an asset mix typical of big pension funds and assuming the continuation of returns of the last five years, a more reasonable target would be around 4 percent.
This is not to say any particular worker should abandon stocks or pile into bonds, or that the typical pension fund mix should be copied by workers of various ages and incomes.
The room is noisy and the décor is an odd mix of pool tiles, pension wallpaper, and Folies-Bergère light fixtures, but after an hors d'oeuvre or two — chickpea fries or stuffed sardines, for instance — it's easy to get swept away.
The firm has so far invested in companies like Birchbox, Exabeam, and The Muse — which just raised $10 million in its series A. Most of the investors in Aspect Ventures' fund a mix of federal institutions, pension funds an nonprofits.
Mark Newman, the general director for worldwide pensions at G.M., declined to give details of the pension funds' investment mix, other than to say it had not changed significantly since last August.
But the more aggressive Legal & General Managed Pension fund – its mix has equities at 75%, bonds 13%, property 1%, cash 6%, other (mostly alternatives) 5% – has slumped 12% over the past month.
