From The Ramparts
by Junious Ricardo Stanton
“Recent data on pension deficits highlight the plight of many pension funds. In the United States, funding deficits of the 100 largest DB plans rose $68 billion to $254 billion in July, according to the Milliman Pension Fund Index. July marked the 10th largest deficit rise in the index’s 11 year history. Even if these companies were to achieve an optimistic annual return of as much as 8 percent and keep the current benchmark yield of 5.12 percent, their funding status is not estimated to improve beyond 93 percent by end-2013 from the current 83 percent.” - Financial Terrorism and The Death of the Middle Class by David DeGraw
We are in the throws of a massive class war not only here in the United States but around the world. The kleptocratic oligarches are cruel psychopathic predators moving to destabilize and plunder the global economy to reduce the masses (us) to debt slaves, taxed serfs and wage peons. If you think I’m being hyperbolic, take a look at your household budget. Wages are stagnant if you are lucky enough to have a job; when you factor in inflation they are decreasing. “While the fact that a record number of Americans are living in poverty should not surprise anyone at this point, what should surprise many is that according to Table P-5 of the Census report on (Lack of) Income, the median male is now worse on a gross, inflation adjusted basis, than he was in… 1968! While back then, the median income of male workers was $32,844, it has since declined to $32,137 as of 2010. And there is your lesson in inflation 101 (which we assume is driven by the CPI, which likely means that the actual inflation adjusted income decline is far worse than what is even reported). The only winner: women, whose median inflation adjusted income over the same period has increased by 188%. That said, it is still at 65% of what the median male makes. So injustice all around.” Financial Terrorism and The Death of the Middle Class by David DeGraw http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26620
The fact is the already rich are getting richer as the leeches who are sucking us dry get “compensated” at mind boggling ratios compared to the types of salaries ordinary workers receive. “In 2005, the average CEO in the United States earned 262 times the pay of the average worker, the second-highest level of this ratio in the 40 years for which there are data. In 2005, a CEO earned more in one workday (there are 260 in a year) than an average worker earned in 52 weeks... CEO pay is realized direct compensation defined as the sum of salary, bonus, value of restricted stock at grant, and other long-term incentive award payments from a Mercer Survey conducted for the Wall Street Journal and prior Wall Street Journal-sponsored surveys. Worker pay is the hourly wage of production and non-supervisory workers, assuming the economy-wide ratio of compensation to wages and a full-time, year-round job.” CEO-to-worker pay imbalance grows By Lawrence Mishel www.epi.org/publication/webfeatures_snapshots_20060621/
And these guys are not even the super rich international banksters who bribe politicians, coerce and manipulate the stock, bond and commodities markets who have put the whole Western economy on the brink of utter and total collapse with their insane speculation via the creation of derivatives and other forms of economic hazard. These guys are the modern day equivalents of snake oil salesmen shilling their get rich quick potions and “you too can be a billionaire” serums to the gullible and greedy. Untold numbers of individuals as well as pension fund managers fell for their okey-doke and flim-flam, invested our hard earned pensions in these Hedge Funds, investment syndicates and Ponzi schemes.
As bad as that is, if you are already on a pension or collecting Social Security you face even greater challenges: the rampant under funding of most public and private pension funds and the ruling elites’ relentless attack on Social Security. “Falling stock markets in May sent pension plan assets lower, resulting in the worst funded status for the typical U.S. corporate pension plan since October 2009, according to monthly statistics published by BNY Mellon Asset Management. The funded status in May declined 4.3 percentage points to 82.0 percent. Through the end of May, the funded status of the typical U.S. corporate plan is down 3.5 percentage points for the year. The falling stock markets resulted in a decline of 4.8 percent in assets at the typical U.S. corporate plan, while liabilities were little changed in May, rising 0.3 percent, as reported by the BNY Mellon Pension Summary Report for May 2010... State pension funds are not fairing any better. Weak equity markets and low bond yields are exacerbating pension deficits. This is a long-term structural problem that will require difficult decisions.” http://pensionpulse.blogspot.com/2010/06/funded-status-of-us-plans-drops-in-may.html
Another report put it this way, “According to one estimate, U.S. states face a public pension shortfall of roughly $2.5 trillion. Many American corporations are also in trouble. According to Standard & Poor's, the overall pension status of S&P 500 companies improved over the past year, but it's still about 84%, underfunded by $245 billion. Still, many companies face huge shortfalls, not all of which are shrinking. General Motors' (NYS: GM) plan reduced its underfunding from $16.2 billion to $11.5 billion between 2009 and 2010, but Ford's (NYS: F) shortfall rose from $6.2 billion to $6.7 billion.” A New Way to Fix Pension Shortfalls
By Selena Maranjian, The Motley Fool http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/07/29/a-new-way-to-fix-pension-shortfalls/
As for Social Security as I’ve reported time and time again, our own government has been ripping us off and stealing the money in the Social Security Trust Fund for over four decades. In addition, Obama and the ruling elites’ puppets in Congress passed a bill in 2010 that effectively reduced the contribution to the Social Security Trust Fund at the time it needs funding the most. “Your paying payroll deductions of 6.2 percent (as in the original plan) is a way to build for your retirement--it's not a tax, as the billionaires claim. Your employer also pays 6.2 percent of your wages into the Social Security Fund. Reducing your payroll deductions by a third or a half is DETRIMENTAL to you--endangering your retirement. Your boss is HAPPY to reduce the amount he has to pay relative to your retirement. The Democrats and Republicans who voted for the tax cut bill in 2011 believed workers are so stupid that they would think this reduction of 30 percent--which they're falsely calling a tax reduction--is a benefit to workers. In 2011, Obama and his Republican co-conspirators are betting that the American public is so dumb that we'll fall for an even greater reduction in worker retirement funds... Now that this attack on Social Security has been approved by Congressional traitors (81 in the Senate and 277 in the House), the Republican Party-dominated Congress that came into power in 2011 is making sure that the payroll deductions from Social Security remain a permanent feature. Once this sabotage tactic against Social Security begins to affect the program's ability to pay out benefits, the capitalist cabal will use this excuse to renew its old tactic of saying that Social Security must be entirely scrapped.” They’re Trying To Destroy Social Security http://www.hermes-press.com/sss1.htm
This is class warfare and we the people are losing big time. But if you spend all your time watching Dancing With The Stars, sports and other silliness, you have no idea what is going on.
- The War on Retirees and Pensions, jrswriter, 09/28/2011
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