Resources

This page provides a detailed listing of articles, videos, and materials relating to the Resisting Pension Fund Capitalism project. The first is an article that was a product of our first event, a two-part series of webinars delivered in May and June, 2022. We include links below to video recordings of these two webinars – including versions in English, French, and Spanish.

Below those videos is our selection of key articles and materials relating to this topic, some of which are available in English, French, and Spanish.

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GRAIN, A Growing Culture and Kevin Skerrett, We need a movement to take pensions out of financial markets, 2022.

Article argues that tweaking financialised pension fund systems as “insiders” will not resolve the systemic problems that these systems generate and that, instead, we need to fight for retirement schemes that are not secured by financial markets. 

FRENCH, SPANISH

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GRAIN & A Growing Culture, Resisting pension fund capitalism: a webinar series, 2022. 

Two 90-minute webinars designed to help activists gain a better understanding of how pension funds work, what they invest in, what the impacts are and what people can do about it. 

FRENCH, SPANISH

Kevin Skerrett, What is ‘pension fund capitalism’?, 2022.

The slide presentation from Kevin’s presentation during part 1 of the 2022 webinar series.

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Kevin Skerrett, Canada’s Public Pension Funds: The New Masters of the (Neoliberal) Universe and various other articles, 2018.

This and other articles on Canadian pension funds and the larger politics of pension fund capitalism are available on Kevin Skerrett’s page on the Academia.edu website, found here. It includes chapters from his co-edited volume, The Contradictions of Pension Fund Capitalism.

GRAIN, The global farmland grab by pension funds needs to stop, 2018

Report examines how pension fund money has fuelled the financial sector’s massive move into farmland investing over the past decade. It provides a table of the pension funds involved in farmland investment and estimates about the amount of money they are deploying into it. It assesses how this unprecedented take-over of farmland by financial companies impacts rural communities and food systems, and what groups are doing to challenge it.

FRENCH, SPANISH

GRAIN, Barbarians at the barn: private equity sinks its teeth into agriculture, 2020

Report analyzes data from a private equity database to show how private equity funds have become increasingly involved in agriculture and food. Several case studies are used to explain the impacts of their growing presence and to show how private equity funds operate. 

FRENCH, SPANISH

GRAIN, Will more sovereign wealth funds mean less food sovereignty?, 2023

What are these “sovereign wealth funds”? How are they being used? What link, if any, do they have with people’s struggles around food sovereignty, land grabbing and today’s deepening climate crisis?

FRENCH, SPANISH

CICTAR, CPPIB’s ORPEA Debacle, 2024.

The Orpea scandal in France, involving catastrophic treatment of elderly residents and care workers, raises broader questions about public pension fund investment in the private long-term care industry

FRENCH

Empower, Runaway train: The perilous and pernicious path of private capital worldwide, 2021

Book explains where private capital comes from, its salient trends, and worrisome characteristics. It explores opportunities for transparency and accountability across the investment chain and offers recommendations for its intended audience — corporate accountability advocates and other civil society stakeholders of corporations. 

IPYS y Pulitzer Centre on Crisis Reporting, A dónde va mi pensión, 2021 (SPANISH)

A website project to inform people in Latin America about their national pension funds. It provides resources, data and investigative articles exposing where and how pension funds in Latin America invest. 

Fundación SOL, 2021. Nuevo Sistema de Pensiones para Chile: Modelamiento Actuarial de la Propuesta de la Coordinadora NO+AFP (2021-2100). (SPANISH)

A working document that critiques Chile’s privatised pension system and proposes a new model.

Colectivo Ecofeminista Dafnias, Financiamos nuestra propia destrucción: sobre desigualdades de género, degradación ambiental y sistemas de pensión, 2021. (SPANISH)

Article calls for a public debate that incorporates citizens in the redesign of the pension system that will affect not only future generations, but also their territories and the quality of life of all.

Grégory Rzepski, Capitalisation, l’autre nom de la réforme des retraites, 2023. (FRENCH)

The massive protests in the streets of France are not just against the proposed pension reforms but also a rejection of a society of every person for themself, where speculative accumulation takes precedence over solidarity.

Common-Wealth, Undefined benefit: Fixing the UK Pensions System, 2023

The UK’s financialised pensions system is marked by inequality, insecurity and instability. We require a radical reimagining to build a system fit for purpose.

Eva L. Blum und Matthias Kern, Pensionskassen und das Klima: Wie unsere Altersvorsorge zu den sozialen und ökologischen Problemen beiträgt, 2021. (GERMAN)

Article looks at Switzerland’s privatised pension system and show that, while high earners, insurance companies and investment advisors benefit, the negative consequences are more noticeable than ever, not only for large parts of society but also for “nature”. 

GRAIN and StreetNet International, Social protection for market traders and street vendors in an era of pension fund capitalism, 2023.

We need actions that address the issue of social protections and old age on two fronts: on the one hand, ensuring that public systems provide everyone, including informal economy workers, with a safe and dignified retirement and, on the other, ensuring that these systems are funded in ways that are not destructive to communities.

Isabel Ortiz, Fabio Durán-Valverde, Stefan Urban and Veronika Wodsak, Reversing Pension Privatizations: Rebuilding public pension systems in Eastern Europe and Latin America, 2018.

This book documents the under performance of private mandatory pensions in fifteen countries, and provides lessons on how to reverse privatisation and improve national pension systems.

The International Social Security Association, website. 

ISSA’s website provides analysis and data on pension systems around the world for its 177 member countries.

Jeffrey Sklansky, The Work of Retirement, 2023

In the US, as retirees have increasingly relied on professional asset managers and caregivers, the finance and health sectors have undergone converging crises over fiduciary duty and elder care, posing parallel challenges for organized labor.

Leokadia Oręziak, Pension Fund Capitalism: The Privatization of Pensions in Developed and Developing Countries, 2022.

This book examines the origins and consequences of pension fund capitalism, which has spread around the world since 1981, when the pension system was completely privatized in Chile. 

Brett Christophers, Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World. 2023.

This book looks at how Blackstone and other asset managers own more and more of the basic building blocks of everyday life, shaping the  lives of each and every one of us in profound and disturbing ways. Also see the book review and podcast.

Daniela Gabor, The Wall Street Consensus, 2020.

The Wall Street Consensus is an elaborate effort to reorganize development interventions around partnerships with global finance, getting international development institutions and governments of poor countries to ‘escort capital’ – institutional investors and the managers of their trillions in assets – into investable development assets. 

Follow the Money, “The formidable power of pension assets is making the financial sector more powerful while increasing global inequality”, 2023.

Interview with German political economist Benjamin Braun