This is the part of a series of columns called "The Naked Truth," by retirement expert Dan Solin. Please bring him your questions, in the comments box, and he will answer as many as he can.

William Galvin, the Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, has sued UBS, accusing it of misleading retail investors to buy auction rate securities when it knew that the market for them was crashing.

The Complaint has a familiar ring to it. It alleges that UBS favored its institutional clients over its retail clients (big surprise!), urging its retail clients to buy these securities when its institutional clients were selling them. UBS sold these securities by representing to its retail clients that they were safe, liquid and secure--the equivalent of cash.

Among the duped investors was a seventy-eight year old retiree who was told that these securities had a "7 day liquidity." He is still waiting.

This is the part of a new series of columns called "The Naked Truth," by retirement expert Dan Solin. Please bring him your questions, in the comments box, and he will answer as many as he can.

Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) is the world's largest company with over $380 billion in revenues. It's success is based on it ability to squeeze vendors to the breaking point. The largest manufacturers are no match for this retail giant.

Wal-Mart's 401(k) plan has over $9.5 billion in assets. Its modestly paid employees count on this plan to fund their retirement.

A recent class action lawsuit makes allegations which, if true, will cause many of these employees to be great disappointed.

This is the part of a new series of columns called "The Naked Truth," by retirement expert Dan Solin. Please bring him your questions, in the comments box, and he will answer as many as he can.

Proposed legislation introduced by Senators Lieberman and Collins would ban large pension plans from investing in the commodities markets. It would be difficult to conceive of more wrong-headed regulation.

Pension funds are already subject to regulation that requires all investments to be prudent. There may be valid reasons why investing in commodities is entirely prudent for a small part of a pension portfolio, including the need to hedge against inflation. There is little evidence that the relatively small allocation of pension portfolios to the commodities sector has had any meaningful impact on the run up of oil prices.

Of far more importance to employees--and worthy of congressional intervention--is the shameful 401(k) and 403(b) system, which affects the retirement plans of 70 million Americans.

This is the part of a new series of columns called "The Naked Truth," by retirement expert Dan Solin. Please bring him your questions, in the comments box, and he will answer as many as he can.

Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin were indicted on June 18, 2008. They are accused of a litany of fraudulent activities in connection with the demise of two hedge funds they managed for Bear Stearns.

Cioffi and Tannin are entitled to the presumption of innocence. The obligatory "perp walk," staged for the benefit of the press, is offensive to traditional notions of justice. Not only does it demean and humiliate them, it taints the jury pool and intrudes upon their right to a fair trial.

Nevertheless, the indictment offers an insight into conduct that would otherwise be inexplicable.

Here are two highly educated, sophisticated, fund managers who achieved the American dream -- and then some. Why would they risk it all by, as alleged, misrepresenting the risk of these funds, and their personal stake in them?

This is the part of a new series of columns called "The Naked Truth," by retirement expert Dan Solin. Please bring him your questions, in the comments box, and he will answer as many as he can.

Question: I want to move my 401(k). My company was recently bought out and I don't feel secure. What options to I have?

Answer: As a general rule, you cannot rollover a 401(k) while you are still employed. There is a narrow exception to this rule. Check with your plan administrator to see if your plan permits an "in-service, non-hardship withdrawal distribution election." The rules permitting this distribution usually have certain requirements that must be met, like length of service or reaching a certain minimum age.

This is the part of a new series of columns called "The Naked Truth," by retirement expert Dan Solin. Please bring him your questions, in the comments box, and he will answer as many as he can.

Question: When I started my teaching career in 1967, I began putting money into an Aetna Variable Annuity. After the market fall in 1973, I put my accumulated money into their fixed annuity. During the remaining years, I added to another variable annuity,(by then Aetna was ING) until I retired in 2004. While I haven't started taking any money from my annuities, is it possible, or should I even consider, taking all the money and putting it elsewhere?

Answer: I assume that you purchased some of these annuities within a 403(b) plan. This is the retirement plan for educators, hospital employees, charitable organizations and members of the clergy. You would think we would treat these valuable members of our community with special care. Think again.

This is the part of a new series of columns called "The Naked Truth," by retirement expert Dan Solin. Please bring him your questions, in the comments box, and he will answer as many as he can.

Question: What are your thoughts on deferred annuities?

Answer: I think they are great...for insurance salesman (big commission items) and insurance companies (little risk; big reward).

For most investors they are an expensive and ill-suited product.

Let's disassemble the sales pitch and see what lies underneath these products:

The much-hyped "death benefit" really isn't much of a benefit. The guaranteed benefit is calculated as the value of your contributions, minus any withdrawals. You are funding your own "death benefit." There is little possibility of the guarantee coming into play. How likely is it that the value of your account at the time of death will be less than what you originally invested?

This is the part of a new series of columns called "The Naked Truth," by retirement expert Dan Solin. Please bring him your questions, in the comments box, and he will answer as many as he can.

Warren Buffet has placed a bet that a group of top notch hedge funds cannot beat the returns of an S&P 500 index fund, net of fees, costs and expenses, over the next 10 years.

On the other side of the bet is Protege Partners, a firm that makes its living finding the world's best hedge funds for its clients.

Under the terms of the deal, Protege picked five top notch "fund of funds" hedge funds. It is betting that the average returns of these elite funds will beat the returns of Vanguard's low cost S&P 500 fund.

The winner gets $1 million. Both sides have agreed to donate the proceeds to charity.

So who's the sucker?

This is the part of a new series of columns called "The Naked Truth," by retirement expert Dan Solin. Please bring him your questions, in the comments box, and he will answer as many as he can.

Among those who study the financial markets, Eugene F. Fama, the Robert R. McCormick Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, Graduate School of Business, is an icon.

He is a major proponent of the "efficient markets" theory which holds the well documented view that stock prices are random and efficient.

Professor Fama believes that analysts are unlikely to find profitable anomalies in stock prices on any consistent basis and he rejects the notion that past performance is a predictor of future performance.

Based upon his exhaustive research, Professor Fama believes investors would be well advised simply to capture market returns, by investing in low cost index funds, rather than paying brokers and advisors to select stocks or actively managed mutual funds, in an effort to "beat the markets."

At the other end of the investing spectrum is Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS), a purveyor of the daily Wall Street grist, which advises its clients to rely on the expertise of its analysts in making decisions about what stocks to buy or sell and which actively managed mutual fund---and fund manager----is likely to outperform the markets or other funds.

This is the part of a new series of columns called "The Naked Truth," by retirement expert Dan Solin. Please bring him your questions, in the comments box, and he will answer as many as he can.

Question: What about those "experts" who investing/trading only when temporary catalysts create irrational prices? Such as when a company like Kentucky USA Energy (KYUS) with no actual business spends millions on spam mailers...Or when broker margin calls force short sellers to buy into stock like Mexco Energy (MXC) and the sleepy stock surges from $3 to $50 within a few weeks--once the mailers and margin calls stop, would the odds not overwhelmingly favor a drop in stock price? (my strategy)

Answer: All of the information about listed companies is public. It is scrutinized by tens of thousands of professional traders and by millions of investors. This includes the kind of information you set forth in your question.

Ask yourself: Is it really likely that the professional traders at Goldman Sachs and other world class investment bankers have missed the significance of this information and that these stocks are not efficiently priced?

This is the part of a new series of columns called "The Naked Truth," by retirement expert Dan Solin. Please bring him your questions, in the comments box, and he will answer as many as he can.

Every survey I have seen indicates that saving for retirement is the number one goal of Americans.

Given the extreme importance of this subject, it is puzzling why investors continue to look for investment advice in all the wrong places.

Case in point: Many investors rely on Jim Cramer's stocks picks. Yet academic analysis clearly demonstrates that the stocks he recommends have an initial bump in price, but reverse their gains less than two weeks after his recommendation. These studies show that Cramer can move markets, but only for a very short period of time.

This is the part of a new series of columns called "The Naked Truth," by retirement expert Dan Solin. Please bring him your questions, in the comments box, and he will answer as many as he can.

There is no doubt that the coming retirement tsunami will make $4.00 a gallon gas look cheap.

In a thought provoking article, entitled Common Cents, by benefits consultant, Brooks Hamilton, the author notes these signs of impending crisis:

• The majority of American either have no retirement plan or don't participate in the one they have;
• Those that do participate, don't contribute early enough and don't make adequate contributions;
• The returns earned by participants are dismal.

This perfect storm for retirement disaster is exacerbated by longer life expectancy and sharply increasing health care costs.