Pay apples and risk oranges
Posted by Marc Hodak on December 16, 2009 under Reporting on pay | 
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With the headline “Executives Enjoy ‘Sure Thing’ Retirement Plans” a pair of writers created a story about the iniquity of retirement plans for executives vs. “ordinary” workers. But the headline is misleading. Here is how the story actually begins:
Jacqueline D’Andrea last year lost more than 60% of the 401(k) savings she built over a decade as a Wal-Mart Stores Inc. manager, she says. The 1.2 million employees in the retailer’s 401(k) retirement plan lost 18% as the market plunged, corporate filings show.
Top executives at Wal-Mart didn’t face such risks. Thanks to a guaranteed 6.6% return, Chief Executive Officer H. Lee Scott Jr. had gains of $2.3 million in a supplemental retirement-savings plan, bringing its total savings to $46.7 million.
But they aren’t actually comparing retirement plans; they compare a supplemental deferred compensation plan designed to provide the kind of modest returns that few people would accept for the bulk of their retirement assets to a fully invested 401k retirement plan in a year of steep stock market declines.
And that’s what happens when you have financially illiterate journalists writing for a financially illiterate audience–the opposite of education.