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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, , 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. 

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GRAIN & A Growing Culture, , 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. 

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Kevin Skerrett, , 2022.

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

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Kevin Skerrett, , 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 . It includes chapters from his co-edited volume, The Contradictions of Pension Fund Capitalism.

GRAIN, , 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.

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GRAIN, , 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. 

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GRAIN, , 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?

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CICTAR, , 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

Empower, Runaway train: , 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, , 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. (2021-2100). (SPANISH)

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

Colectivo Ecofeminista Dafnias, , 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, , 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, , 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,, 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, , 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, , 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, . 

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

Jeffrey Sklansky, , 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, , 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, . 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 and .

Daniela Gabor, , 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, , 2023.

Interview with German political economist Benjamin Braun