Bye Bye (Private) Pensions

[crimethink]

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/slashed-...tland-workers/

February was a bad month for Larry Burruel and thousands of other retired Ohio iron workers. His monthly take-home pension was cut by more than half from $3,700 to $1,600.

Things have been rough in the Rust Belt, but this was a particularly powerful punch in the pocketbook for Burruel, who started in the trade at 19 and worked 36 years before opting for early retirement to make way for younger workers. Unfortunately, this sagging industry doesn't have enough younger workers to pay for retirees like Burruel, whose pension plan is in what the U.S. Treasury Department calls "critical and declining status."

Burruel and the 4,000 members of his Cleveland Iron Workers Local 17 pension plan are the canaries in the coal mine as far as pension cutbacks go. At least 50 Midwestern pension plans -- mostly the kind jointly administered by trustees for a labor union and a group of employers -- are in this decrepit condition. Several plan sponsors have already applied to the Treasury Department to cut back retirees' allotments.

This cross-section of America includes more than a million former truck drivers, office and factory employees, bricklayers and construction workers who are threatened with cutbacks that could last the rest of their lives.

The Cleveland iron workers was the first to actually be approved for this triage under a 2014 law known as the Multiemployer Pension Fund Reform Act (MPFRA). Many pension advocates call it unfair.

"It was run through Congress in the dead of night, and President Obama -- who was supposed to be for the working class -- signed it," complained Burruel. The MPFRA is overseen by attorney (((Kenneth Feinberg))), known for dividing up huge settlements in cases such as the 9/11 terrorist attack and the BP (BP) oil spill in the Gulf.

However, it's not clear what would be fair. The hammer is falling on the private pension funds that are running out of cash. And those shortfalls have many reasons. "The stock market crash had a huge effect," said Outreach Director Joellen Leavelle of the Pension Rights Center. "Some plans lost billions." It was a loss from which they never recovered.

[singular_me]

universal basic income to the rescue

[crimethink]

universal basic income to the rescue

Don't count on it.

Universal warfare to their rescue is more like it.

A LOT of "excess human resources" must be "deleted."

[boogietillyapuke]

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/slashed-...tland-workers/

February was a bad month for Larry Burruel and thousands of other retired Ohio iron workers. His monthly take-home pension was cut by more than half from $3,700 to $1,600.

Overpaid unskilled work just like UAW.

[Joshua01]

I guess I can't count on the pension that I never had. Good thing I wasn't depending on it!

[madfranks]

Things have been rough in the Rust Belt, but this was a particularly powerful punch in the pocketbook for Burruel, who started in the trade at 19 and worked 36 years before opting for early retirement to make way for younger workers

In what fantasy world did this guy think he would retire at age 55 and let others take care of him for the rest of his life? If the guy lives to be 91 he'll have been retired as long as he worked.

[Joshua01]

It worked for many others over the decades ,it just couldn't be sustained long enough for him. Timing is everything!

In what fantasy world did this guy think he would retire at age 55 and let others take care of him for the rest of his life? If the guy lives to be 91 he'll have been retired as long as he worked.

[crimethink]

In what fantasy world did this guy think he would retire at age 55 and let others take care of him for the rest of his life? If the guy lives to be 91 he'll have been retired as long as he worked.

The fantasy world sold to him by Capitalism.

The fantasy world where he thought the US Government and the Military-Industrial Complex actually cared about him and his country, and would never think to deindustrialize America and move our industry to sworn enemies like Red China.

[TroyOz]

In what fantasy world did this guy think he would retire at age 55 and let others take care of him for the rest of his life? If the guy lives to be 91 he'll have been retired as long as he worked.

Sounds like my dad - retired at 55 and still collecting on his defined pension plan at 92. Totally unsustainable. Early birds get the worm.

[Dachsie]

In this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgI914jTzBA&t=1140s




Catherine Austin Fitts – We Need Our $40 Trillion In Stolen Cash Back
Greg Hunter
Greg Hunter
110K
51,768 views
Published on Jul 18, 2017

Don’t expect the mainstream propaganda media to give you any warning or real information about what’s happening. Financial Expert Catherine Austin Fitts contends, “The conundrum for a CNN is how do we get ratings? How do we get attention without talking about the real news? The real news is, since fiscal 1995, we have disappeared or bailed out or stolen over $40 trillion of our money. If we are going to balance the budget, we need that $40 trillion or the assets thereon or the liabilities of the people who stole it back on the table, or else we’re toast. If we can give $27 trillion to the banks, I can assure you we can afford $4 trillion of a pension fund bailout. Mr. Global doesn’t want us to do the algebra. This is like fourth grade math. $27 trillion to bail out the banks, and we are not going to bail out the pension funds? Where does that come from?”

Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with Catherine Austin Fitts, Publisher of The Solari Report at Solari.com.

All links can be found on USAWatchdog.com: http://usawatchdog.com/we-are-now-int...

_____

Fitts says our govt should bail out the pension funds.

Her ideas and solutions seem more realistic to me.

But I still say the Federal Reserve and the New York banksters are the main theives in all of this. Fitts just called them "Mr. Global."

____

Many private companies for many years have been sort of forcing early retirement on their employees. They want to move people out in their mid to late 50 years of age. Even govt. agencies do that too. They figure they save money by what their annuity would be compared to what their salary is.

__________

Another thing that no one wants to talk about is the mismanagement of the retirement funds. This goes back 75 years or more. Some of it is deliberate malfeasance on the part of the investment people who manage the funds which includes kickbacks and quid quo pros and all sorts of under the table deals. Part of it is just naive investment officers who are laughed at and continually ripped off by the big boy crooks and thieves of the Wall Street investment firms.

Another big part of the pension collapse is the govt putting more and more taxes and regulations on big companies so that the companies have to outsource or go overseas to be able to afford labor costs and still make a profit. Some of it is greedy bankster types who own those businesses and do not care about USA or its workers.


Usury and capitalism is what has destroyed U S A economy and ability of the middle class to earn a living wage.

Socialism is no solution to anything and is condemned by my church, but all this talk of "free markets" and "free trade" (libertarianism) seems wrong and proven not true too.

Economics is not a science. It involves MORAL decisions. That's what we ain't got.