All over America tonight, millions of elderly Americans are wondering if their money is going to run out before it is time for them to die. Those that are now past retirement age are not going to be rioting in the streets, but that doesn’t mean that large numbers of them are not deeply suffering. There are millions of elderly Americans that are leading lives of “quiet desperation” as they try to get by on meager fixed incomes. Many are surviving on Ramen noodles, oatmeal, peanut butter or whatever other cheap food they can find in the stores. There are some that are so short on cash that they will not turn on the heat in their homes until things get really desperate. As health care costs soar, millions of elderly Americans find themselves deep in debt and facing huge medical bills that they cannot possibly pay. A lot of older Americans would go back to work if they could, but jobs are scarce and very few companies seem to even want to consider hiring them. Right now caring for all of the Americans that have already retired is turning out to be an overwhelming challenge, and things are about to get a whole lot worse. On January 1st, 2011 the very first Baby Boomers turned 65. A massive tsunami of retirees is coming, and America is not ready for it.
Sadly, most retirees have not adequately prepared for retirement. For many, the recent economic downturn absolutely devastated their retirement plans. Many were counting on the equity in their homes, but the recent housing crash crushed those dreams. Others had their 401ks shredded by the stock market.
Meanwhile, corporate pension plans all across America are vastly underfunded. Many state and local government pension programs are absolute disasters. The federal government has already begun to pay out significantly more in Social Security benefits than they are taking in, and the years ahead are projected to be downright apocalyptic for the Social Security program.
So needless to say, things do not look good for the Baby Boomers that are now approaching retirement age.
The following are 21 signs that the new reality for many Baby Boomers will be to work as wage slaves until they drop dead….
#1 According to a shocking AARP survey of Baby Boomers that are still in the workforce, 40 percent of them plan to work “until they drop”.
#2 A recent survey of American workers that included all age groups found that54 percent of them planned to keep working when they retire and 39 percent of them plan to either work past age 70 or never retire at all.
#3 A poll conducted by CESI Debt Solutions found that 56 percent of American retirees still had outstanding debts when they retired.
#4 A recent study by a law professor from the University of Michigan found that Americans that are 55 years of age or older now account for 20 percent of all bankruptcies in the United States. Back in 2001, they only accounted for 12 percent of all bankruptcies.
#5 Between 1991 and 2007 the number of Americans between the ages of 65 and 74 that filed for bankruptcy rose by a staggering 178 percent.
#6 Most of the bankruptcies among the elderly are caused by our deeply corrupt health care system. According to a report published in The American Journal of Medicine, medical bills are a major factor in more than 60 percentof the personal bankruptcies in the United States. Of those bankruptcies that were caused by medical bills, approximately 75 percent of them involved individuals that actually did have health insurance.
#7 The U.S. government now says that the Medicare trust fund will run dry five years faster than they were projecting just last year.
#8 Starting on January 1st, 2011 the Baby Boomers began to hit retirement age. From now on, every single day more than 10,000 Baby Boomers willreach the age of 65. That is going to keep happening every single day for the next 19 years.
#9 Over 30 percent of all U.S. investors currently in their sixties have more than 80 percent of their 401k retirement plans invested in equities. So what happens if the stock market crashes again?
#10 All over the United States predatory lenders are coldly and cruelly foreclosing on elderly homeowners. You can read what one lender is doing to a 70-year-old woman and her terminally ill husband right here.
#11 Medical bills are absolutely devastating large number of elderly Americans right now. Many are going to great lengths to try to pay their bills. An elderly woman that lives in the Salem, Oregon area that is fighting terminal bone cancer tried to raise some money for her medical bills by holding a few garage sales on the weekends. However, a neighbor ratted her out, and so now the police are shutting her garage sales down.
#12 Social Security’s disability program has already been pushed to the brink of insolvency and wave after wave of new applications continue to pour in.
#13 Approximately 3 out of every 4 Americans start claiming Social Security benefits the moment they are eligible at age 62. Most are doing this out of necessity. However, by claiming Social Security early they get locked in at a much lower amount than if they would have waited.
#14 According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Social Security systempaid out more in benefits than it received in payroll taxes in 2010. That was not supposed to happen until at least 2016. Sadly, in the years ahead these “Social Security deficits” are scheduled to become absolutely nightmarish as hordes of Baby Boomers retire.
#15 In 1950, each retiree’s Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 U.S. workers. In 2010, each retiree’s Social Security benefit was paid for by approximately 3.3 U.S. workers. By 2025, it is projected that there will be approximately two U.S. workers for each retiree. How in the world can the system possibly continue to function properly with numbers like that?
#16 According to a shocking U.S. government report, soaring interest costs on the U.S. national debt plus rapidly escalating spending on entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare will absorb approximately 92 cents of every single dollar of federal revenue by the year 2019. That is before a single dollar is spent on anything else.
#17 Most states have huge pension liabilities that are woefully underfunded. For example, pension consultant Girard Miller recently told California’s Little Hoover Commission that state and local government bodies in the state of California have $325 billion in combined unfunded pension liabilities. When you break that down, it comes to $22,000 for every single working adult in the state of California.
#18 Robert Novy-Marx of the University of Chicago and Joshua D. Rauh of Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management recently calculated the combined pension liability for all 50 U.S. states. What they found was that the 50 states are collectively facing $5.17 trillion in pension obligations, but they only have $1.94 trillion set aside in state pension funds. That is a difference of 3.2 trillion dollars. So where in the world is all of that extra money going to come from? Most of the states are already completely broke and on the verge of bankruptcy.
#19 According to one recent survey, 36 percent of Americans say that they don’t contribute anything at all to retirement savings.
#20 According to another recent survey, 24 percent of all U.S. workers saythat they have postponed their planned retirement age at least once during the past year.
#21 Even though prices for necessities such as food and gas have been exploding, those receiving Social Security benefits have not received a cost of living increase for two years in a row. Many elderly Americans that are living on fixed incomes are being squeezed like they have never been squeezed before.
There are millions of Americans out there that have done everything “right” all of their lives, but that now find the system letting them down in their golden years.
So how badly are some people hurting? Well, a reader identified as “Anna44″recently shared with us what some of her family members have been going through in this economy….
My B-I-L was a dealership owner/manager who worked long hours over 38 years and had to close his doors when Saturn was dissolved. When his dealership went under, 72 others lost their job. That’s 72 families who took a hit. He lost his home, everything. A few of his former employees lost their homes as well eventually. They were not lazy or WORTHLESS. It took him a year and a half to finally find something, but now he lives in a hotel unable to qualify for a house or apartment. This is an educated man who competed nationwide for top dog and got it more then once. His biggest fault? He’s almost 60, young enough to need the work, but too old to be hired.
As for my husband- 26 years AF officer, handling millions & billions on International & National levels has just entered his 7th month of unemployment. Two tours abroad- lazy he is NOT. He doesn’t qualify for unemployment, nor is he counted because he gets a retirement check. He wants and needs to work- yet there is little out there. If he doesn’t find something soon, we too will lose the home we sunk every cent into after 20 years of saving for it!
These are Americans that should be getting ready to enjoy their golden years, but that are now fighting just to survive.
Today you will find a disturbingly large number of elderly Americans flipping burgers or welcoming people to Wal-Mart. But most of them are not doing it because they are bored with retirement. Rather, most of them are working as wage slaves because that is what they have to do in order to survive.
Sadly, there are a whole lot of companies out there that do not want to hire people that are past a certain age. If you are older than 50, there are a lot of jobs that you should just basically forget about applying for.
Instead of valuing the experience and wisdom of our elders, our society openly makes fun of them and treats them as undesirables.
If you are afraid of getting old, you are not being irrational. Getting old is indeed something to fear in this society. We tend to treat elderly Americans like garbage.
Abuse of the elderly is rampant. For example, a report from a couple of years ago found that 94 percent of all nursing homes in the United States had committed violations of federal health and safety standards.
As the U.S. economy continues to crumble, the way we treat the elderly is probably going to get even worse.
Right now there is tons of bad news about the economy, and another major economic downturn would put even more pressure on federal, state and local government budgets.
The truth is that there is simply no way that we can keep all of the financial promises that we have made to elderly Americans even if the most optimistic projections for our economy play out.
If the worst happens, we are going to see a lot more elderly Americans eating out of trash cans and freezing to death in their own homes.
The United States is facing a retirement crisis of unprecedented magnitude. A comfortable, happy retirement is rapidly going to become a luxury that only the wealthy will enjoy.
For most of the rest of us, our golden years are going to mean a whole lot of pain and suffering.
That may not be pleasant to hear, but that is the truth.
Replies
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the Public Treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy always to be followed by dictatorship.
The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. Those nations always progress through the following sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith,
from spiritual faith to great courage,
from great courage to liberty,
from liberty to abundance,
from abundance to selfishness,
from selfishness to complacency,
from complacency to dependency,
from dependency back into bondage."
–Alexander Fraser Tytler
Lord Woodhouselee (1748-1813), "The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic", Scottish historian at Edinburgh University
We do not believe that Americans, particularly elderly Americans, understand what the elitists are up to in regard to Social Security and Medicare. The Council on Foreign Relations and the Peterson Foundation has for years been working on plans to terminate Social Security and Medicare. Cuts in these paid for programs were impossible to get through Congress. Thus, the ruse was born of getting around Congress. A flash issue was raised regarding a short-term debt extension that could have been passed in 15 minutes that demanded budget cuts for passage. In that process the Obama Enabling Act was formulated, patterned on the German Enabling Act passed in 1933 by Adolph Hitler. It allows a 12-person panel to bypass Congress regarding legislation. The changes are made in this committee and cannot be debated or amended and must be voted on via a straight up and down majority vote. While this was transpiring, as part of the plot, Standard and Poor’s downgraded the US debt rating based upon there not being large enough cuts in what Congress likes to call entitlements, which are not entitlements, but paid for benefits. The reason for the cuts is that both benefits trusts are broke, all the funds having been spent on other things over the years. S&P said that if major cuts are not made that they would cut the US debt rating again in November. Thus, you can understand the framework and what the elitists have paid the committee and Congress to do. The committee takes all the heat upon passage and Congress generally gets off the hook.
Needless to say, the controlled mainstream media reports on none of this. That a chained CPI is to be employed - is little discussed. The cost of living adjustment, or COLA, changes as CPI changes. The problem is the CPI, currently up 3.6%, is a bogus statistic. Real inflation based on the 1980 model is up 11.2%. As you probably remember there has been no COLA upward adjustments for two years and another is being considered this month for next year. It will be interesting to see what they come up with – probably no change. The COLA based on CPI isn’t bad enough now they want to chain-weight it. These changes won’t take place for a few months so there is time for Americans to complain to all of the members of the House and Senate regarding this rape of both benefits that they have paid for. If Congress wants to cut they can cut the military budget. What the powers behind government want to do is make the nations elderly; they call them useless eaters, carry the burden, and force them to live like animals.
This chained CPI will increase even less than the bogus CPI, or some 0.3% less on average than the CPI-W, or the Consumer Price Index for urban wageworkers, and clerical workers, which is what COLA really is. As you can see retired Americans have been cheated by government for years and now they want to cheat them even more leaving many of the elderly destitute in order to finance more wars. Looting Social Security provides revenue to be wasted elsewhere.
Politicians believe their constituents won’t know what they are up too, but they are mistaken. Many of them will be kicked out of Congress for betraying the elderly of benefits that they paid for over a lifetime of work. The cuts would cost retirees $100 billion and S&P wants even further cuts. This is going to put seniors into poverty, especially the disabled. The proposal would cut more at 9.5%, almost 10%, versus 4% at 75. These politicians are calculated to bring early death to the aging. As this travesty takes place, Medicare benefits would be reduced by another $100 billion. In 2014, we will have the Obama death panels, where a panel will decide who will be treated and who will be allowed to die. Soylent Green comes to mind, this travesty, planned by elitists to transfer funds and get rid of useless eaters, was fully aided by America’s controlled media, which misled all readers and listeners. The program was formulated the by ex-president of the Council on Foreign Relation’s billionaire Pete Peterson who lied about the entire program. The chained CPI is a scam just as the CPI is. All of you men and women in your 40s and 50s will have to make up the loss unless you want to see granny and grandpa starve to death. AARP, which is in part funded by the federal government, naturally came out in favor of cuts for its paying members. That proves once and for all what a useless organization AARP really is. They tried to play both sides of the issue. What this really amounts to is a tax increase on those who can least afford it. What really concerns the aged is that the new tax increase is already in place. The question is will the unconstitutional illegal, “Obama Enabling Group,” increase the burden on the aged even more?
It should be noted that the elite members of the “Obama Enabling Group” are all part of the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission and Bilderberg Groups. They will do as the illuminists tell them to do. Their control companies won’t share in the tax increases because they are immune and exempt. We have yet to see anyone file a lawsuit challenging the unconstitutional law that created this group of enablers. As we pointed out before this group has been bought and paid for via $64.5 million in campaign payoffs. The biggest contributors were legal firms for more than $31 million and Wall Street threw in more than $11 million. These are the people who in part, control our government - JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Bank of America. Your commentaries and votes mean very little to these people.
This is August and Europe is on vacation as the European Union and the euro zone fall apart. Mrs. Merkel and Mr. Sarkozy had a meeting that accomplished nothing. It was supposed to be a cover for all of Europe’s bureaucrats who were enjoying themselves while their union burned.
The European Central Bank, the ECB, continues to finance the insolvent euro zone participants by purchasing their bonds. The most recent recipients have been Italy and Spain. The total is now approaching some $900 billion. The bonds are virtually worthless and other members have to pay for these interventions. In addition another $500 billion has been lent to these problem countries. The EFSF, the European Financial Stability Fund, the method for loans is supposed to terminate in 15 months, so the permanent solution is supposed to be the ESM, the European Stability Mechanism, which can lend $700 billion. All these loan packages are guaranteed by euro zone members and the citizens of the remaining 11 countries. This commitment guarantees a AAA rating, which we see as dubious at best. All these commitments have forced the lenders in the case of Greece to now demand collateral on just about everything the Greek government owns. We have said from the beginning Greece should just default but that is not what the bankers and other solvent nations want. They want to own the country and enslave its inhabitants. At the same time many of the lenders are only in slightly better shape then the sovereigns they are lending too. That means the stronger members are under increased pressure, as their credit ratings and finances are pushed to the limit. In addition a number of nations not within the euro zone, such as England and Norway have no intention of getting involved in the ESM. There is absolutely no question that the euro zone cannot survive under these circumstances.
We still believe the euro zone doesn’t fully understand their problem. It was 1-1/2 years ago we predicted that the bill would total $4 trillion. A few months ago we raised that to $4 to $6 trillion, as Germany raided their estimate from $1 to $3.5 trillion and the EU support mechanism raided their estimate to $2.8 trillion. The bottom line is none of the estimates are payable, but the desire for world government is so great that the Illuminists are wiling to destroy the system to accomplish that. Finance ministers call for greater commitments, but where will the funds come from? Sooner or later these one-worlders are going to discover that if they keep pushing, the system it will crash and burn.
In addition to the sovereign problems European banks are exposed for $700 billion in just the debt of Greece, Ireland and Portugal. If Spain, Italy and Belgium are included the exposure grows to $2.8 trillion and that is just the bank exposure. Thus sovereign and bank exposure is $7 to $8 trillion. These kinds of numbers make you realize that all of Europe is broke and all the banks are going to go bankrupt as well as the countries, including Germany. We often wonder whether the European condition wasn’t a Anglo-American trap. We will see in time. Perhaps the one interest rate fits all was the trap, as we believed it was from the beginning. This one interest rate supposedly eliminated risk, when in fact as you can see it heightened risk. The euro could not eliminate that risk, because the six nations over lent and over expanded. No one cared about debt repayment because supposedly the euro protected everyone from that, and as we have found out the euro and sovereign commitment was not adequate protection. Quite frankly Germany was with its AAA rating, and financial success was supposed to carry everyone. It has now been proven they cannot and the German people are shouting we have had enough of this. It has to be stopped now. We will take our losses, dump the euro and return to our beloved Deutsche Mark.
If debt is restructured at today’s recognized level for the problem countries, even a 50% default would wipe all 17 countries except Germany. 1-1/2 years ago Greece made a 50% default offer to Germany, which rejected it. If they had accepted it these nations could have been dealt with over a long period of time avoiding a euro collapse, but they were not smart enough to envision such a solution, because they really didn’t grasp the enormity of the problem and where it would take them. They understand now but it is too late. If you think the foregoing is overwhelming all those structured securities called CDS and MBS, bonds containing mortgages. They were holding $2 trillion worth and they are probably still holding them. They are carried at par and are worth at best $0.30 on the dollar. Banks do not have sufficient capital to cover these losses and we do not believe the public in Europe will cover these bank losses. Even the IMF says the banks have not recognized these losses. Bank stress tests are a joke, pabulum for the masses. Italy has 30 problem banks, but they lent conservatively, have high levels of deposits and very small leverage. If they are in trouble you can imagine what the banks in the other countries look like. How can governments recapitalize banks when the governments are broke? In the case of Greece a 50% write off would cost the ECB, the 17-euro zone country citizens, $70 billion, plus what banks and others are holding. The sovereigns are buried just as the banks are. The ECB has paid in capital of $7.4 billion. Euro zone central banks have $1.4 trillion in capital. How can anyone believe they can fund losses of $7 trillion? Talk about contagion. The word should be catastrophe.
As we have often said, the problem and debt has only been extended. All the debt is unpayable. Interest rates and bond yields of troubled nations are such that debt cannot be repaid. How can anyone have confidence in a broken system? Unsustainable is the operative word. There is no political courage to end all this because all of the key figures and many others are controlled by the Illuminists, who want world government. They will hold out until the system has collapsed, and hope they can save themselves. That is why people worldwide have to prepare for what is coming. Europe’s financial collapse will be the catalyst that will cause all other nations to fall. That is why it is so very important that all of your investable assets be invested in gold and silver, coins, bullion and shares.
The Economic Collapse
We are steamrolling toward a massive global debt meltdown, and at this point world leaders seem to be all out of solutions.
Over the last 30 years or so, the greatest debt bubble in the history of the planet has produced unprecedented prosperity in the western world. But now that debt bubble is starting to burst and the bills are coming due. Many believe that “ground zero” for the coming global debt meltdown will be in Europe. Unlike the U.S. and Japan, the nations of the EU can’t just print more money to cover their debts. Nations such as Greece, Portugal and Italy must repay their debts in euros, and those nations are rapidly getting to the point where their debts are going to overwhelm them. Unfortunately, major banks all over Europe are very highly leveraged and are also very heavily invested in the sovereign debt of nations such as Greece, Portugal and Italy. If even one EU nation defaults it will start tipping over financial dominoes. If more than one EU nation defaults it could cause a cataclysmic wave of bank failures all over Europe.
But Germany and the other more financially stable countries of the EU cannot bail out nations like Greece, Portugal and Italy indefinitely. Pouring money into Greece is like pouring money into a black hole. When you take money from financially stable countries and pour it into hopeless messes, you may stabilize things for a little while, but you also cause the financial condition of the financially stable nations to start deteriorating.
Right now, the yield on 2 year Greek bonds is up to 44%. Basically, the market is screaming that these are horrible investments and that they will almost certainly default.
Greece cannot fire up the printing presses and print more money, so they are now totally dependent on others to bail them out.
Just how desperate have things become in Greece? Just consider the following excerpt from a recent article by Puru Saxena….
Can you imagine?
No nation on earth can afford to pay out nearly a quarter of GDP just on interest on government debt.
So just how did Greece get into this position? Well, it turns out that big U.S. banks such as Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase played a big role. The following is an excerpt from a recent article by Andrew Gavin Marshall….
All over the world, politicians love to “kick the can down the road”, and big Wall Street banks love to find creative ways to help them do that.
But now Greece is about to collapse, and the people that helped them get into this mess will probably never be held accountable.
If Greece does default, it is going to have dramatic consequences all over Europe. For a chilling look at what could potentially happen when Greece defaults, just check out this article by John Mauldin.
Sadly, Greece is far from the only problem in Europe. Portugal, Ireland and Italy also have debt to GDP ratios that are above 100%.
The biggest potential problem, at least in the near-term, is Italy.
Italy is the fourth largest economy in the EU, and lately the financial problems of the Italian government and Italian banks have been making headlines all over the globe.
Italy is a far, far larger potential problem than Greece is.
The EU can handle bailing out Greece, at least for now.
If Italy gets to the point where it needs large bailouts, that is going to bring down the whole system. The EU simply does not have enough money to perform an extensive financial rescue of Italy.
As you can see from this chart, the exposure that European banks have to Italian debt is absolutely massive. If Italian debt goes bad, it is going to take down a whole bunch of banks.
Not only that, but many believe that the European Central Bank itself is now in some very dangerous territory.
It is estimated that the European Central Bank is now holding somewhere in the neighborhood of 444 billion euros worth of debt from the governments of Greece, Italy, Portugal, Ireland and Spain.
The financial consequences of a default by one or more of those nations could potentially be catastrophic.
According to London-based think tank Open Europe, the European Central Bankis massively overleveraged….
That doesn’t sound good.
Surely the European Central Bank would be recapitalized somehow, but this is just another example that shows just how dangerous huge amounts of leverage can be.
As I wrote about in a recent article about the sovereign debt crisis, if the dominoes begin to tumble in Europe it is going to take everybody down.
The big banks in Europe are leveraged to the hilt, and they are massively exposed to government debt.
If you don’t think that this is a problem, just remember what happened back in 2008.
Back then, Lehman Brothers was leveraged 31 to 1. When things turned bad, Lehman was wiped out very rapidly.
Today, major German banks are leveraged 32 to 1, and those banks are currently holding a massive amount of European sovereign debt.
Yes, things could become really nightmarish if the dominoes start to fall.
Already we are seeing huge signs of trouble at major banks all over Europe.
Major European banks UBS, Barclays, Credit Suisse, RBS, and HSBC have all announced layoffs recently. In fact, when you add them all up, the total number of layoffs announced by these banks just this month is over 40,000. Overall, the grand total of layoffs by European banks so far this year is now up to67,000.
The mood in the financial sector over in Europe is very dark right now. Just consider the following excerpt from a recent Bloomberg article….
Just like back in 2008 with U.S. banks, we are seeing European banks getting absolutely pummeled right now. A recent article in The Sydney Morning Herald documented some of the carnage….
Things in Europe continue to get worse and worse and worse.
Do not take your eyes off of Europe. This crisis is just getting started.
Not that there aren’t huge debt problems around the rest of the globe as well.
Japan has a national debt that is now over 200 percent of GDP, and they are really struggling to recover from the recent disasters that devastated that nation.
Moody’s has just downgraded Japanese government debt one notch to Aa3, and more downgrades could be coming. For now Japan is still able to borrow huge piles of money very, very cheaply but if that changes Japan could be wiped out very quickly.
Of course the nation with the biggest debt of all is the United States.
At the moment, the U.S. national debt is sitting at a grand total of$14,649,289,670,347.85.
Fortunately, the U.S. is also able to borrow massive amounts of money very, very cheaply right now. But when that changes it is going to be absolutely cataclysmic for our economy.
Sadly, our politicians continue to act as if this debt binge can go on forever.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the budget deficit for the federal government will be about 1.28 trillion dollars this year. This will be the third year in a row that we have had a budget deficit of over a trillion dollars.
To put that in perspective, from George Washington to Ronald Reagan the U.S. government racked up a grand total of about one trillion dollars of debt. But this year alone we will go 1.28 trillion dollars more into debt.
At the moment, the U.S. national debt is expanding by about 2 and a half million dollars every single minute. It is hard to put into words how absolutely foolish that is.
As I wrote about yesterday, someone needs to wake up America. Our debt is exploding and our economy is dying.
We haven’t even solved the problems caused by the last financial crisis. The real estate market is still a gigantic mess. Purchases of both new and previously existing homes in the United States continue to fall.
But there will never be a housing recovery until there is a jobs recovery, and our politicians continue to stand by and watch as millions of our jobs are shipped overseas.
Unemployment is rampant, and even many of those that do have jobs are barely able to survive.
Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs. Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.
That is not a good trend.
Sadly, it looks like things are not going to get much better any time soon.
Right now, the Congressional Budget Office is projecting that unemployment in the U.S. will remain above 8% until 2014.
That should really scare you, because government numbers are almost always way too optimistic. The folks in the federal government hardly ever project that unemployment will actually go up.
So if they are saying that unemployment will remain above 8 percent until 2014, the truth is that things will probably be worse than that.
We have entered very frightening times. We are on the verge of a massive global debt meltdown, and nobody is sure what is going to happen next.
Let us hope for the best, but let us also prepare for the worst.
– George Orwell
“ Hindsight is not only clearer than perception-in-the-moment but also unfair to those who actually lived through the moment.”
– Edwin S. Shneidman, Autopsy Of A Suicidal Mind
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-whats-going-to-happen-when-gre...
What Happens if the Greeks Default?
Andrew Lilico, writing in the London Telegraph, gives us the answer to that question with a series of short bullet points. I might not agree with all of them, but he is looking in the right direction. (quoting from http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/andrewlilico/100010332/what-ha...)
“It is when, not if. Financial markets merely aren’t sure whether it’ll be tomorrow, a month’s time, a year’s time, or two years’ time (it won’t be longer than that). Given that the ECB has played the “final card” it employed to force a bailout upon the Irish – threatening to bankrupt the country’s banking sector – presumably we will now see either another Greek bailout or default within days.
“What happens when Greece defaults. Here are a few things:
- Every bank in Greece will instantly go insolvent.
- The Greek government will nationalize every bank in Greece.
- The Greek government will forbid withdrawals from Greek banks.
- To prevent Greek depositors from rioting on the streets, Argentina-2002-style (when the Argentinian president had to flee by helicopter from the roof of the presidential palace to evade a mob of such depositors), the Greek government will declare a curfew, perhaps even general martial law.
- Greece will redenominate all its debts into “New Drachmas” or whatever it calls the new currency (this is a classic ploy of countries defaulting)
- The New Drachma will devalue by some 30-70 per cent (probably around 50 per cent, though perhaps more), effectively defaulting 0n 50 per cent or more of all Greek euro-denominated debts.
- The Irish will, within a few days, walk away from the debts of its banking system.
- The Portuguese government will wait to see whether there is chaos in Greece before deciding whether to default in turn.
- A number of French and German banks will make sufficient losses that they no longer meet regulatory capital adequacy requirements.
- The European Central Bank will become insolvent, given its very high exposure to Greek government debt, and to Greek banking sector and Irish banking sector debt.
- The French and German governments will meet to decide whether (a) to recapitalise the ECB, or (b) to allow the ECB to print money to restore its solvency. (Because the ECB has relatively little foreign currency-denominated exposure, it could in principle print its way out, but this is forbidden by its founding charter. On the other hand, the EU Treaty explicitly, and in terms, forbids the form of bailouts used for Greece, Portugal and Ireland, but a little thing like their being blatantly illegal hasn’t prevented that from happening, so it’s not intrinsically obvious that its being illegal for the ECB to print its way out will prove much of a hurdle.)
- They will recapitalise, and recapitalise their own banks, but declare an end to all bailouts.
- There will be carnage in the market for Spanish banking sector bonds, as bondholders anticipate imposed debt-equity swaps.
- This assumption will prove justified, as the Spaniards choose to over-ride the structure of current bond contracts in the Spanish banking sector, recapitalising a number of banks viadebt-equity swaps.
- Bondholders will take the Spanish Banking Sector to the European Court of Human Rights (and probably other courts, also), claiming violations of property rights. These cases won’t be heard for years. By the time they are finally heard, no one will care.
- Attention will turn to the British banks. Then we shall see…”
Or the EU can kick the can down the road yet another time, as many mainstream candidates expect. The ECB will blink. Some way will be found to find money yet again, and politicians everywhere will pray that something happens that saves the system – like the Greeks suddenly start to pay taxes and Greek and Irish GDP jumps up to 5%. Nouriel Roubini has outlined a very clear plan for restructuring. It is not without pain, but there are ways, if they can join what Greg Weldon calls a twelve-step plan for European bankers to deal with reality.
Sidebar: for the record, there are reportedly massive bank runs in Greece, especially on large uninsured deposits.
It is hard to understand how people can ignore what I think are clear warning signs, but the following analysis shows us the process. My good friend and early mentor Dr. Gary North wrote a poignant piece in his Reality Check letter today about ignoring the signs of pending problems. I insert it here as the launching point for the close of the letter. (I learned about Austrian economics, and a great deal of what I know about writing, economic history, and more during my early years [in the ’80s] as Gary’s business associate.)
“Trigger Points and Evasive Action
“When would a wise Jew have begun making plans to leave Germany? 1933? 1934? 1938? 1939?
“In retrospect, most people would say 1933, the year Hitler was appointed (not elected) Chancellor by President von Hindenburg. On 30 January, Hitler became Chancellor. He asked Hindenburg to dissolve the government and schedule new elections for March 5, which Hindenburg did.
“Should a Jew have begun packing his bags? Maybe not. Maybe after the next election, the Nazis would have been defeated.
“On 27 February, the Reichstag building burned down. One man did it, who admitted he had done it. Hitler immediately identified him as a Communist, although even today, it is not clear that he did anything but act alone.
“Hitler used this as a propaganda tool. On March 5, the Nazis got 44% of the popular vote, up from 33%. With an allied party, they had 52% of the vote in the Reichstag.
“Was it time to pack the bags? Maybe not. The Nazis did not have a majority. They had only a coalition majority.
“On March 23, the government passed the Enabling Act. It took a two-thirds vote to do this. Hitler now possessed dictatorial powers. He had attained these by means of support by rival political parties. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire
“Was it time to pack the bags? Maybe not. Those powers might not be used.
“On April 1, a one-day boycott of Jewish businesses was staged by the S.A., which were technically private storm troops. Was it time to pack those bags? Maybe not. This was not government-directed. It was only symbolic.
“What about 1935's Nuremberg Laws on Citizenship and Race? They made it illegal for Jews to be citizens. But that was only politics. How many votes did Jews have, anyway? They were only 1% to 2% of the population. Politics isn't everything.
“And so on, right down to Crystal Night in November 1938, when rioters broke the plate glass windows of 7,500 Jewish-owned businesses and burned or damaged 200 synagogues, meaning most synagogues in Germany.
“After that, over 100,000 Jews packed their bags and departed. Between 1933 and 1939, about half the Jews in Germany emigrated: 250,000. But half did not.
“There were a series of trigger points, 1933 to 1939. Most Jews sat tight until very late.
“Yet in Austria, Ludwig von Mises saw the handwriting on the wall in 1934. He looked at the map. He concluded that the Nazis would wind up running Austria. Hitler was an Austrian, and he would want to control Austria. He packed his bags and took his first salaried teaching position, a job in Geneva, Switzerland. He warned Jewish friends to get out. Economist Gottfried Haberler did, in 1936. Economist Fritz Machlup already had. He fled in 1933. Well, not quite. He was in the United States in 1933, and he decided not to return to Austria. Both men found safe havens in the United States. So did Mises in 1940, when he left Switzerland, barely escaping German troops in France as he and his wife road a bus toward Spain, and from there to Portugal and the United States.
“One might have thought that a careful reading of ‘Mein Kampf’ (1926) would have been a sufficient trigger point in the Summer of 1933. The gun was loaded. Then the hammer was cocked in March: the Enabling Act.
“Laws enacted by the Reich government shall be issued by the Chancellor and announced in the Reich Gazette. They shall take effect on the day following the announcement, unless they prescribe a different date. Articles 68 to 77 of the Constitution do not apply to laws enacted by the Reich government.
“Articles 68 to 77 stipulated the procedures for enacting legislation in the Reichstag. ‘So what?’ This seems to have been a mere technicality. The language was so procedural. But there was substance to it. As we read on Wiki, ‘The Enabling Act allowed the cabinet to enact legislation, including laws deviating from or altering the constitution, without the consent of the Reichstag.’
“It was time to move out and move on . . . and not just if you were Jewish.
“Some people see the signs. Others do not. Some decide to get out while the getting is good. Others do not.
“Incident by incident, trigger point by trigger point, people see signs. Most people ignore them. ‘It can't happen here.’ Most times it doesn't. Sometimes it does
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-whats-going-to-happen-when-gre...