Biden Appoints New Members to PBGC Advisory Committee

President Joe Biden last week appointed four people to serve on the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation Advisory Committee.

The PBGC Advisory Committee is a seven-member committee appointed by the president. The appointees do not require Senate confirmation. Each member is to represent either labor (two), employers (two) or the public (three). Members serve three-year terms and advise the PBGC on its investment decisions and the discharge of its duties.

The four appointees are: Jeanmarie Grisi of New Jersey, Mike Jacobson of Maryland, Joe LoCicero of New York and Kweku Obed of Illinois. They will be joining the other three members: Preston Crabill, Lynn Franzoi and Guy Pinkman.

Grisi is a re-appointment; she will now serve as chair, representing employers. She is currently head of global pensions at Nokia and oversees more than $35 billion in benefit investments.

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Jacobson, representing the general public, recently retired as administrator of the National Automatic Sprinkler Industry Trust Funds, a position he held for 36 years. The NASI Trust Funds include three multiemployer pension funds that provide benefits to more than 10,000 retired participants.

LoCicero, representing the general public, is currently the chair of the Segal Group. He is also a fellow of the Conference of Consulting Actuaries and a member of the American Academy of Actuaries.

Obed, representing employers, is the managing director for Marquette Associates and serves on their board of directors.

Tags: American Rescue Plan Act, PBGC, Special Financial Assistance

Sure, corporate earnings are heading down, never a good thing for a stock market that reflects company profit pictures. Always a sign of recession. Maybe, though, earnings won’t be so bad off and won’t usher in a downturn.

That’s the idea presented by Sam Stovall, CFRA Research’s chief investment strategist, in a November 16 research .

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“Just as ‘all trout are fish, but not all fish are trout,’ all recessions since [World War II] have been accompanied by GAAP/operating EPS declines, but not all EPS declines accompanied recessions,” he commented.

Indeed, while the S&P 500’s earnings per share tumbled in 2015 (to $86, from $102 the prior year), no recession ensued. Up ahead, expect an earnings slowdown, although not an earnings recession (in which dwindling profits push the economy over the brink), according to Stovall.

This year has seen a slowing of EPS growth. The second quarter had a 9% expansion, and the third quarter, for which the reporting is almost complete, should come in at 4.1%, by CFRA’s estimate.

Things get a bit hairy next year by this reckoning, albeit temporarily. EPS should slip to 0.7% growth by the June quarter next year, then reaccelerate to 9.7% by the final period, Stovall wrote. That is way down from a 47% rise in 2021’s fourth quarter, but at least it would be headed up.

The standard prediction on Wall Street has been for a 2023 recession. In corporate America, however, there is a little less pessimism lately. The number of third quarter earnings calls mentioning the term “recession” was 179, a drop from the second period’s 242, by FactSet Research Systems Inc.’s count.

One caveat is that the third quarter recession-mention tally is still far above the 10-year average of 65. Helping reduce the negative outlook is that the September-ending quarter featured gross domestic product growth (2.6%), after the two previous quarters logged GDP shrinkage.