I personally make sure that some of my investments are in foreign securities or in international commodity portfolios that are independent of the US dollar. But that's a personal preference. I do not invest in currencies because it's so complicated and so risky. I would not attempt that without excellent professional help.

Only if enough ordinary Americans speak up and demand better from both their employers and their government is the system going to get fixed. But first of all, we have to understand how serious the problem is.

If the experts are right in their calculations, then we face the prospect of millions of people retiring into poverty from the American middle class in the years ahead. That has all kinds of social and economic consequences. We need to anticipate those and start tackling the problem in a constructive way.

There is no question that policy makers, corporate leaders, pension consultants, and journalists too have to get out into the real world to at least see the pain of retirement woes before they start to prescribe policies and solutions.

Less money for retirees means less purchasing power means less economic growth overall. It's a big problem.

One of the difficulties in getting to the bottom of the poor prospects for retirement is that the policy and intellectual elites, including corporate leadership, who are dealing with this problem, rarely have the same difficulties as the great majority of middle-income Americans.

The main problems are insufficient diversification and the failure to pick age-appropriate strategies - that is, more aggressive when you're younger, and more conservative when you approach retirement. But even then you have to invest for growth.