Nest eggs without the yolk.

Policymakers in America and Britain used to be rather smug about their pension systems. They had shifted much of the burden of providing for people's retirement off the state and on to the private sector. In America, many companies now run large corporate-pension deficits (the amount by which the value of the schemes' assets falls short of the current value of the pensions they are pledged to pay in the future). In both Britain and the U.S., there has been growing alarm about the state of companies' pension funds. According to estimates by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), a quasi-governmental agency that insures the basic benefits of 44 million Americans with pensions provided by about 32,500 private defined-benefit plans, corporate-pension deficits have swollen to some $300 billion. In Britain, corporate pension schemes are also in trouble.