For those waiting for our economic problems to be solved, you can quit holding your breath. There is simply not going to be a solution to our economic problems on the national level. So why is that the case? Well, it is because the economic policies of both major political parties are very, very similar when you take a close look at them. Yes, that statement may sound downright bizarre to many Americans, but it is true. Both major political parties supported the Wall Street bailouts, both of them fully support the job-killing “free trade” globalization agenda, both of them have dramatically increased the national debt when in power, both of them fully support the currency-killing policies of the Federal Reserve, and neither major political party would get rid of the income tax and the IRS. And that is just for starters. Yes, there are some minor differences when it comes to taxing and spending between the two parties, but the truth is that they are a lot more similar on economic issues than they are different. What we desperately need on the national level is a fundamental change in direction when it comes to economic policy, but we simply are not going to get that from either the Democrats or the Republicans. That means that there is no hope that the economic storm that is coming will be averted.
So why are the Democrats and the Republicans so similar on these issues? Well, a big reason is because of who they are trying to please.
The reality of the matter is that most politicians do not really care about what you or I have to say. Instead, what they are really concerned about is getting as much money for their campaigns as possible so that they can keep getting elected.
When you take a close look at the results of federal elections over the past several decades, it quickly becomes apparent that the candidate that raises the most money almost always wins.
So most politicians have learned to please those that fund their campaigns so that the money will keep rolling in.
Yes, there are a few candidates that are willing to rebel against “the system”, but they are few and far between and the major parties tend to marginalize them.
Once again in 2012, political races will overwhelmingly be won by those that raise the most cash. The following is from Politifact….
In congressional races in 2010, the candidate who spent the most won 85 percent of the House races and 83 percent of the Senate races, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That’s a large percentage, but it’s lower than what the sign indicated.
Indeed, the percentage for 2010 was lower than it had been in recent election cycles. The center found that in 2008, the biggest spenders won 93 percent of House races and 86 percent of Senate races. In 2006, the top spenders won 94 percent of House races and 73 percent of Senate races. And in 2004, 98 percent of House seats went to candidates who spent the most, as did 88 percent of Senate seats.
Once you understand how Washington works, it becomes easier to understand why our politicians do such stupid things.
For example, big corporations tend to donate large amounts of money to political campaigns and they love the “free trade” globalization agenda.
They love to import massive quantities of super cheap foreign goods so that they can undercut the prices of goods made in the United States.
They love to set up manufacturing facilities on the other side of the globe where it is legal to pay slave labor wages to workers.
The “free trade” agenda is great for the largest corporations, but it is horrible for the average American worker.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, the U.S. economy loses approximately 9,000 jobs for every $1 billion of goods that are imported from overseas.
Trade with other countries can be good as long as it is balanced. Unfortunately, the U.S. trading relationship with the rest of the world is tremendously imbalanced.
In 2011, the United States bought more than 550 billion dollars more stuff from the rest of the world than they bought from us.
This trade deficit has enormous consequences that most Americans simply do not understand.
Over the past decade, tens of thousands of businesses, millions of jobs and trillions of dollars have left our country.
Our industrial base is being dismantled and we are rapidly becoming poorer as a nation.
According to U.S. Representative Betty Sutton, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities a day closed down in the United States during 2010.
Just think about that.
Every single day we lost 23 more.
Overall, America has lost a total of more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.
Why do you think cities like Detroit are dying?
The truth is that we killed them with our idiotic policies.
America has a trade imbalance that is more than 5 times larger than any other nation on earth has. We are losing wealth, jobs and businesses at a pace that is absolutely astounding.
It is neither “conservative” nor “liberal” to commit national economic suicide.
Our trade imbalance with China is particularly bad. The U.S. spends about 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods and services from the United States.
Does that sound fair to you?
China slaps huge tariffs on many of our products, they deeply subsidize their own national industries, the brazenly steal technology from us, and they manipulate currency rates so that their products end up being significantly cheaper than ours.
Our trade deficit with China in 2011 was nearly 300 billion dollars. That was the largest trade deficit that one country has had with another country in the history of the world.
Yet both major political parties refuse to do anything about it.
Back in 1985, the U.S. trade deficit with China was only 6 million dollars for the entire year.
In 2011, our trade deficit with China was more than 49,000 times larger.
The consequences of this trade deficit with China are being felt all over the United States every single day.
For example, the United States has lost an average of 50,000 manufacturing jobsper month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
Do you support losing more than half a million manufacturing jobs a year?
If not, then you should be for “fair trade” instead of “free trade” where other nations can cheat us blind as often as they want.
The Economic Policy Institute says that since 2001 America has lost approximately 2.8 million jobs due to our trade deficit with China alone.
Do you think that the U.S. economy could use an extra 2.8 million jobs right now?
Sadly, if current trends continue things are going to get a lot worse.
According to Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University, 40 million more U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades.
So why won’t our politicians do something?
The United States has run a trade deficit every single year since 1976.
That 7.5 trillion dollars could have gone to support U.S. jobs and U.S. businesses.
Taxes could have been paid on that 7.5 trillion dollars.
Instead, it went out of the country and made foreigners wealthier.
So what is Barack Obama doing about all of this?
Well, Obama has been aggressively pushing for even more “free trade” agreements. The Obama administration has inked deals with Panama, South Korea and Colombia and the Obama administration is making the Trans-Pacific Partnership (“the NAFTA of the Pacific“) a very high priority.
Well, Mitt Romney must be criticizing these moves, right?
Mitt Romney wants to make it even easier for jobs to go out of the country and for other countries to drain our wealth. The following quote comes directly from the Romney campaign website….
Access to foreign markets is crucial to growing our economy. We must reassert American leadership in international negotiations, follow through on commitments we have already made, and push aggressively for advantageous new agreements.
So we are not going to see a change in direction in trade policy no matter who wins the next election.
Well, what about the national debt?
Are there differences between the two parties on this issue?
Since Barack Obama entered the White House, the U.S. national debt has increased by $5,027,761,476,484.56.
That comes to $16,043.39 for every man, woman and child living in the United States.
What the Obama administration and the Democrats are doing to future generations is absolutely criminal.
So what about the Republicans?
Well, when the Republicans have had control of the White House they have run up debt “like a drunken sailor” as well.
If the Republican Party wants to have any credibility when it comes to fiscal issues, it needs to publicly admit that George W. Bush was a horrible failure when it came to the federal budget.
George W. Bush was a “big government” politician that dramatically increased the size of the federal government and spent money like it was going out of style.
He was not a conservative when it came to fiscal issues, and that is the truth.
Sadly, neither political party is proposing to balance the federal budget any time soon. There are a few politicians that have suggested doing this, but they have been marginalized.
So why don’t our politicians support living within our means?
Well, the truth is that if the federal government balanced the budget today, it would result in a catastrophic drop in living standards inside the United States. We are currently living in an era of debt-fueled “false prosperity”, and if that false prosperity were to disappear there would be riots in the streets of our major cities within months.
It is much easier for our politicians to continue to pile up more debt and to continue to kick the can down the road.
But this party cannot go on too much longer. Already, the United States has more government debt per capita than Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland or Spain.
As you can see from the chart below, we are in a whole lot of trouble….
Our foolishness will catch up to us in a big way eventually.
Another area where the two major political parties agree is that they both fully support the Federal Reserve.
The Federal Reserve is supposed to keep inflation low, but the truth is that the Fed has absolutely killed the value of the U.S. dollar. Just check out the chart below which was produced by the Fed itself. It shows how dramatically the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar has declined over the years….
Keep in mind that the chart above is using official government numbers which actually downplay how much the U.S. dollar has been debased.
If inflation was measured the exact same way that it was back in 1980, the annual rate of inflation would be more than 10 percent right now.
By any measure, the Federal Reserve has been a colossal failure for the American people. Since the Fed was created, our currency has lost more than 95 percent of its value and our national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger.
The current Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, has a track record of failure that is legendary. If you doubt this, just read this article, this article and this article.
But Barack Obama just loves Bernanke. He nominated him for another term as Fed Chairman and he never criticizes anything that he does.
Thanks Obama.
So will things be any different under Mitt Romney?
Of course not.
During one Republican debate, Mitt Romney actually had the gall to try to explain to all of us why “we need to have a Fed“.
But the Federal Reserve is at the very heart of our economic problems.
Doesn’t Mitt Romney understand that?
The mainstream media is already telling us not to expect any significant changes at the Fed if Romney wins. A recent Reuters article had the following headline….
Are you starting to understand why I am saying that there is not going to be a solution to our economic problems at the national level?
A great economic cataclysm is coming, and there is very little hope that it can be averted.
So what does that mean?
It means that we all need to start preparing to weather the coming storm on an individual level.
The nation as a whole may not change course, but as individuals and as families we can change course.
All of us can work to reduce our expenses, get out of debt, build up a six month financial cushion, learn to grow a garden and slowly become more independent of the system.
Both political parties are leading us down a road that will only end in economic disaster.
Instead of waiting for a “national solution” that is never going to come, you need to focus on being your own solution.
Is there one thing that Tony Robbins, Ron Paul and Ben Bernanke can all agree on? Yes, there actually is. Recently they have all come forward with warnings that the national debt crisis could destroy America if something is not done. Unfortunately, our politicians continue to spend us into oblivion as if there will never be any consequences. When Barack Obama took office, the U.S. national debt was 10.6 trillion dollars. Today, it is 15.6 trillion dollars and it is rising at the rate of about 150 million dollars an hour. During the Obama administration so far, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from 1776 to 1995. The United States now has a debt to GDP ratio of over 100 percent, and another credit rating agency downgraded U.S. debt earlier this month. Any talk of a positive economic future is utter nonsense as long as we are bleeding red ink as a nation far faster than we ever have before. It is absolutely immoral to wreck the financial future of our children and our grandchildren and to leave them with a bill for the greatest mountain of debt in the history of the world, but that is exactly what we are doing. Unless our current debt-based financial system is thrown out, there are only two ways that this game is going to play out. One would involve absolutely bitter austerity and deflation unlike anything ever seen before, and the other would involve nightmarish hyperinflation. Either path would be hellish beyond what most Americans could possibly imagine.
Unfortunately, we are running out of time as a nation. You know that things are late in the game when the head of the Federal Reserve starts using apocalyptic language to talk about the national debt. The following is what Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress recently….
Having a large and increasing level of government debt relative to national income runs the risk of serious economic consequences. Over the longer term, the current trajectory of federal debt threatens to crowd out private capital formation and thus reduce productivity growth. To the extent that increasing debt is financed by borrowing from abroad, a growing share of our future income would be devoted to interest payments on foreign-held federal debt. High levels of debt also impair the ability of policymakers to respond effectively to future economic shocks and other adverse events.
Even the prospect of unsustainable deficits has costs, including an increased possibility of a sudden fiscal crisis. As we have seen in a number of countries recently, interest rates can soar quickly if investors lose confidence in the ability of a government to manage its fiscal policy. Although historical experience and economic theory do not indicate the exact threshold at which the perceived risks associated with the U.S. public debt would increase markedly, we can be sure that, without corrective action, our fiscal trajectory will move the nation ever closer to that point.
The sick thing about this is that the Federal Reserve system is actually designed to generate government debt. The U.S. national debt is now more than 5000 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was created back in 1913. So it is kind of ironic that the head of the organization that was designed to perpetually generate U.S. government debt is now warning that there is too much of it.
But Ben Bernanke is far from alone in warning about the danger of our exploding national debt.
For example, world famous motivational speaker Tony Robbins is also warning that the national debt crisis could destroy our future.
These days, most people throw around the phrase “a trillion dollars” without ever really grasping what it means.
In the video posted below, Tony Robbins uses a fun illustration to help put in perspective how large a “trillion dollars” really is.
If you had a million seconds to do something, would you consider that to be a long time?
Well, it turns out that a million seconds is only about 12 days.
What about a billion seconds? Is that a long period of time?
Well, yes, a billion seconds is close to 32 years. So that is definitely a lot longer than a million seconds.
What about a trillion seconds?
How long do you think that is?
Well, a trillion seconds is about 31,688 years.
So when we talk about how the U.S. government is stealing more than a trillion dollars from future generations every single year, we are talking about an absolutely massive amount of money.
The Tony Robbins video about the national debt crisis posted below has started to go viral all over the Internet. If you have not seen it yet, I definitely recommend taking a few minutes to watch it….
So why are our politicians not doing anything about the U.S. debt crisis?
Well, it is because most of them value getting elected over and over again above doing what is right for future generations.
For the past four decades, the United States has been enjoying a 15 trillion dollar party. All of this borrowed money has enabled us to live far, far beyond our means.
If our politicians voted to severely cut spending or to raise taxes dramatically at this point, our economy would suddenly readjust to a more realistic standard of living. But that would be extremely painful and most Americans voters would be absolutely furious. They would demand that someone “fix” the economy immediately. But the truth is that what we have been enjoying all these years has not been real. It has been bought with trillions of dollars stolen from future generations. But most of our politicians just want to keep the party rolling as long as humanly possible so that they can keep getting voted back into office.
Fortunately, there are a few politicians that are willing to stand up and tell the truth about our national debt crisis. For example, in the video posted below Ron Paul scolds the rest of Congress for continuing to vote for debt limit increase after debt limit increase….
Unfortunately, the American people seem to prefer politicians that endlessly lie to them about how bad things really are.
For example, back at the beginning of the Bush administration we were promised that we would be swimming in gigantic surpluses by now.
That didn’t exactly work out, now did it?
Barack Obama promised us that he would cut the size of the federal budget deficit in half by the end of his first term.
Since 1975, we have added more than 15 trillion dollars to the national debt. In fact, the U.S. national debt is now more than 22 times larger than it was when Jimmy Carter became president.
A lot of talking heads on television continue to assure us that everything is going to be okay, but the truth is that we are about to experience some absolutely devastating consequences for decades of really bad decisions.
For example, the rest of the world is rapidly losing faith in our currency and the reign of the U.S. dollar as the primary world reserve currency is in serious danger of coming to an end. When that happens, gasoline, food and just about everything else that you buy is going to be a lot more expensive.
Already, there are very ominous signs that the rest of the world is getting tired of financing our endless spending. In 2011, the Federal Reserve bought approximately 61 percent of all new government debt issued by the U.S. Treasury Department. This is not supposed to happen. The Federal Reserve is not supposed to be monetizing our debt and this is something that Congress should be looking into.
Also, at this time of the year people love to complain about the outrageous amount of taxes that most hard working Americans have to pay, but the truth is that eventually it will likely get a whole lot worse.
Just look at Greece. Taxes in Greece have been raised to suffocating levels, government spending has been slashed to the bone and yet they are still running up more debt.
That is going to happen in the United States at some point too, especially if our leaders choose the path of austerity and deflation.
You can’t hide from debt forever.
Have you ever run up debt on a credit card?
A lot of us did that when we were young and foolish, and it can be a lot of fun on the way up.
But eventually a day of reckoning comes and it is extremely painful to find yourself drowning in credit card debt.
Well, we are rapidly approaching our credit limit as a nation.
Some hard choices will have to be made, and there will be a lot of pain.
The false prosperity that we are enjoying now is going to disappear.
Now is the time to prepare for the massive economic shift that is coming. In the coming economic environment, those that are currently living month to month and those that are 100% dependent on the system are going to be in a huge amount of trouble.
Instead of wildly spending money as if the good times will never end like most Americans are, now is the time to get out of debt, to become more self-sufficient and to set aside the money, resources and supplies you will need to weather the storm that is rapidly approaching.
Anyone with half a brain should be able to see that a gigantic economic collapse is coming.
Use the time that you still have left to prepare the best that you can.
If you knew that you could live in luxury for the rest of your life but that by doing so it would absolutely destroy the future for your children, your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren would you do it? Well, that is exactly what we are doing as a nation. Over the past several decades, we have stolen 15 trillion dollars from future generations so that we could enjoy a dramatically inflated level of prosperity. Our 15 trillion dollar party has been a lot of fun, but what we have done to our children and our grandchildren has been beyond criminal. We ran up the greatest mountain of debt in the history of the planet and we are sticking them with the bill. Sadly, both political parties have been responsible for the big spending that has been going on. Both Democrats and Republicans have run up huge budget deficits when in power. But instead of learning the hard lessons of the past, both political parties continue to vote for even more debt. They would rather continue to steal trillions of dollars from future generations than have the party end and have to face the consequences.
And the consequences will be dramatic when the party ends. During fiscal year 2011, the U.S. government spent 3.7 trillion dollars but it only brought in 2.4 trillion dollars. That means that the U.S. government spent about 1.3 trillion dollars that it did not have. It is important to understand that even if the U.S. government spent that 1.3 trillion dollars on really stupid things, that money still got into the pockets of ordinary Americans who then spent it on things like food, gas, housing, etc. In turn, most of those that received money from providing those goods and services would spend it on other things.
So extra government spending can definitely stimulate the economy. The problem is that we have been doing it permanently. Since 1975, we have added more than 15 trillion dollars to the national debt. This has fueled a false prosperity that was way beyond what we could afford.
If the U.S. government tried to go to a balanced budget now, our standard of living would crash and there would be riots in the streets. The American people have been enjoying false prosperity for so long that they have lost any notion of what “normal” actually is.
Think of it this way. If your family makes $40,000 this year and you spend an extra $20,000 on your credit cards, your family would be enjoying a false sense of prosperity.
You could do that year after year as long as the credit card companies keep loaning you more money.
But debt always catches up with you in the end.
It is the same thing with the United States.
We have been running up our national credit card balance and the interest payments have become quite painful.
The U.S. government spent over 454 billion dollars just on interest on the national debt during fiscal 2011.
That is 454 billion dollars that the people of the United States do not receive anything in return for.
So in order to keep up with interest on the national debt and to enjoy a standard of living that is beyond our means we now have to run deficits that are in excess of a trillion dollars every single year.
And a trillion dollars is a staggering amount of money.
If right this moment you went out and started spending one dollar every single second, it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.
Since Barack Obama was elected, the U.S. government has added about 5 trillion more dollars to the national debt.
That kind of debt is a recipe for national financial suicide.
How are we supposed to explain to our children that we are passing a debt of $15,579,852,946,457.64 down to them?
At this point, the United States government is responsible for more than a third of all the government debt in the entire world.
The 15 trillion dollar party that we have been enjoying has been amazing, but all of that debt is soon going to bring us a tremendous amount of pain.
And there is really no way out under our current financial system. As our population ages, government budget deficits are projected to spiral wildly out of control in future years.
Already, entitlement programs are starting to cause massive problems. For example, mandatory federal spending surpassed total federal revenue for the first time ever in fiscal 2011. That was not supposed to happen until 50 years from now.
If the federal government used GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) like all publicly-traded corporations are required to do, the situation would be much worse.
The truth is that the U.S. government never had a “balanced budget” during the end of the Clinton administration. The federal government was borrowing gigantic amounts of money from the Social Security trust fund to finance regular government operations. It was a big fraud. Under GAAP, there would have been huge budget deficits during those years.
And even under the non-GAAP numbers used by the U.S. Treasury Department, the U.S. national debt still increased every single year during the Clinton administration.
So let’s get real.
Our national financial situation has always been much worse than we have been told.
It has been estimated that our current budget deficits would be in the neighborhood of 4 to 5 trillion dollars under GAAP.
And looking down the road a bit, we are facing a tsunami of unfunded liabilities that is absolutely nightmarish.
In other words, we have committed ourselves to tens of trillions of dollars of expenses that we don’t have any money for.
According to Professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff, the U.S. is facing a “fiscal gap” of over 200 trillion dollars in the coming years. The following is a brief excerpt from a recent article that he did for CNN….
The government’s total indebtedness — its fiscal gap — now stands at $211 trillion, by my arithmetic. The fiscal gap is the difference, measured in present value, between all projected future spending obligations — including our huge defense expenditures and massive entitlement programs, as well as making interest and principal payments on the official debt — and all projected future taxes.
And it just keeps getting worse. Recently it was revealed that Obamacare will add 17 trillion dollars more to our long-term unfunded obligations.
Basically what we have done is we have committed future generations to a life of endless debt slavery to pay for our debts and for the financial promises that we have made.
How could we be so stupid?
Of course this entire fraudulent system is going to completely collapse before we get too much farther down the road anyway. Right now the whole thing is essentially being held together by chicken wire and duct tape.
Most Americans do not realize this, but the Federal Reserve bought approximately 61 percent of all government debt issued by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2011.
Normally, the Federal Reserve is not supposed to be doing this.
But right now there are not nearly enough buyers of U.S. government debt at the super low interest rates that the U.S. government wants to pay. A recent Money News article explained that foreigners have been increasingly shying away from U.S. debt….
“In 2009, such foreign purchases of U.S. debt amounted to 6 percent of GDP and has since falled by over eighty percent to a paltry 0.9 percent.”
Instead of interest rates on U.S. Treasuries rising to attract additional investors, the U.S. Federal Reserve has been intervening to make up the difference.
This is essentially “monetizing the debt” and it is something that Ben Bernanke promised that he would never do.
But he is doing it.
If the Federal Reserve was not buying up all this debt, interest rates on U.S. debt would soar and so would U.S. government interest payments.
Yes, this is a giant Ponzi scheme and it cannot last for long.
Of course all of this could have been avoided if our politicians had not been running up such massive amounts of debt all these years.
Some have suggested that our problems could be solved by simply increasing taxes on the wealthy.
Well, the truth is that the top 5 percent of all income earners already pay nearly 50 percent of all federal taxes and soaking them even more will not even come close to solving the federal budget crisis.
For example, if Bill Gates gave every single penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for 15 days.
And as Bill Whittle has shown, you could take every single penny that every American earns above $250,000 and it would only fund about 38 percent of the federal budget.
So taxing the wealthy will certainly not solve all of our problems.
In fact, when you tax the wealthy and the “somewhat wealthy” it slows economic growth in a number of different ways.
Number one, they have less money to spend into the economy.
Number two, they have less money to invest in business activities.
Number three, it gives wealthy individuals and corporations more of an incentive to move out of the United States. As I have written about previously, the global elite are already hiding about 18 trillion dollars in offshore banks. The U.S. government keeps trying to tap into all of that offshore wealth, but the elite always seem to be a few steps ahead of the game.
Yes, we should try to close loopholes in the tax system, but the truth is that the root cause of our problem is that the federal government is simply spending way, way too much money.
Right now, spending by the federal government accounts for about 24 percent of GDP. Back in 2001, it accounted for just 18 percent.
But our politicians always want to put off spending cuts for another day because they know that immediate spending cuts would really hurt the economy.
“The time for austerity is not today,” Lew told NBC News “Meet the Press.” “If we were to put in austerity measures right now, it would take the economy in the wrong way.”
Yes, the Obama administration definitely does not want to hurt the economy with an election coming up in a few months.
So when will it be time to seriously cut government spending?
The day never seems to arrive.
But even though the federal government has been pumping more than a trillion extra dollars into the economy every year, the economy has not shown much improvement. The percentage of working age Americans that have jobs has barely budged for over two years.
Yes, the policies of the Obama administration have stabilized the U.S. economy for the moment, but if he was actually going to tell the truth he would say something like this….
“By mortgaging the future of our children and our grand-children I have stabilized our economic statistics for the short-term. Unfortunately, I am going to have to continue to financially abuse future generations to keep us from falling into another Great Depression. Meanwhile, I am making our long-term financial problems far, far worse. But the most important thing is that I win re-election so that I can continue to be president. Thank you for being so selfish and so willing to destroy the future of your children. Vote for me in 2012 and let the party continue!”
Unfortunately, the party is going to come crashing to an end at some point.
Right now, the global financial system is based on the U.S. dollar and on U.S. government debt.
There will come a time when the rest of the world is going to get sick and tired of watching this Ponzi scheme play out and they are going to completely lose faith in the U.S. dollar and in U.S. government debt. In fact, there are already signs that this is starting to happen.
When faith in our currency and our debt is completely gone, it will be nearly impossible to get back and the game will be over.
The false prosperity that we are experiencing right now is about as good as things are going to get.
Enjoy it while you still can, because when it is gone that will be the end of it.
Both the Democrats and the Republicans have failed us. They played fast and loose with our future and they never planned for the long-term.
Now we are facing a collapse of unprecedented magnitude that most Americans will never even see coming.
How would you feel if you worked for a state or local government for 20 or 30 years only to have your pension slashed dramatically or taken away entirely? Well, this exact scenario is playing out from coast to coast and in the years ahead millions of elderly Americans are going to be affected by broken promises and vanishing pensions. In the old days, things were much different. You would get hired by a big company or a government institution and you knew that the retirement benefits that they were promising you would be there when you retired in a few decades. Unfortunately, we have now arrived at a time when government institutions and big companies have promised far more than they are able to deliver, and “pension reform” has become one of the hot button issues all over the nation. Many Americans that have been basing their financial futures on their pensions are waking up one day and finding that their pensions are either gone or have been cut back dramatically. According to Northwestern University Professor John Rauh, the latest estimate of the total amount of unfunded pension and healthcare obligations for state and local governments across the United States is 4.4 trillion dollars. America is continually becoming a poorer nation and all of that money is simply not going to magically materialize somehow. So where is that 4.4 trillion dollars going to come from? Well, either pension benefits are going to have to be cut a lot more all over America or taxes will need to be raised dramatically. Either way, we are all going to feel the pain of these broken promises.
There simply is not enough money out there to keep all of the pension commitments that have been made. Something has got to give. In the end, millions of elderly Americans will likely be plunged into poverty as pensions disappear.
Some local governments around the nation are already declaring bankruptcy and are either eliminating pensions or are cutting them very deeply. Just check out what just happened in Central Falls, Rhode Island….
For years, city officials promised robust union contracts and pensions without raising revenue to pay for them. Last August, the math caught up with them. Central Falls was broke, its pension fund short $46 million. It declared bankruptcy.
“My daughters grew up here, went to school here. It’s all gone,” said Mike Geoffroy, a retired firefighter.
He said he could not make the payments on his house after his pension was cut by $1,100 a month.
When will the math catch up with the city where you are living?
For years and years most of our state and local politicians have been ignoring this problem. But eventually a day comes when you simply cannot ignore it any longer.
Check out what Pensacola Mayor Ashton Hayward said about the situation in his city recently….
“When our annual pension liability is more than our yearly property tax revenues, we have to do something”
Keep in mind that taxpayers don’t get any new services for money spent on pensions. It is money that goes straight into the pockets of retired workers. State and local governments are desperately trying to pay retired workers what they are owed and fund ongoing government functions at the same time, but many have reached the breaking point.
All over the country, state and local governments are going broke. The following is from a recent article by Duff McDonald….
Alabama’s Jefferson County has actually gone bankrupt. Stockton, California is all but ready to do the same. And all you have to do is look to Detroit—or any of the nearby auto towns named after a Buick model of one sort or another—and you see fiscal crisis playing out right now. Look in your own backyard—or at the potholes on your neighborhood roads—and you will likely find the same.
The city of 290,000 that rode the wave of the housing boom in the late 1990s and early 2000s now finds itself littered with foreclosed homes, saddled with pension, health care and other obligations it can’t afford, and unable to pay its bills.
The City Council voted last month to suspend $2 million in bond payments and begin negotiations with bond holders, creditors and unions.
And did you notice what is being blamed for the financial problems in Stockton?
Pension and healthcare benefits.
Sadly, we are seeing pension nightmares erupt all over the nation right now.
For example, check out what is happening to the Public School Employees’ Retirement System and State Employees’ Retirement System in Pennsylvania….
PSERS had an accrued unfunded liability of nearly $26.5 billion, the amount of money the fund is short to cover existing retirement benefits. That hole is expected to grow to $43 billion by 2019. SERS is $12.5 billion in the red, and that shortfall is expected to climb to nearly $18 billion by 2018. Unless the stock market makes giant sustained gains, taxpayers will have to refill those funds.
That doesn’t sound good at all.
In California, the Orange County Employees Retirement System is estimated to have a 10 billion dollar unfunded pension liability.
How in the world can a single county be facing a 10 billion dollar hole?
This is madness.
The state of Illinois is facing an unfunded pension liability of more than 77 billion dollars. Considering the fact that the state of Illinois is flat broke and on the verge of default, it is inevitable that a lot of those pension obligations will never be paid.
In fact, there are going to be a whole lot of broken promises all over the country.
Pension consultant Girard Miller 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.
That comes to about $22,000 for every single working adult in the state of California.
So where is all of that money going to come from?
But at least most state and local government employees are still covered by pension plans, even if they are failing.
In the private sector, pension plans are vanishing at lightning speed.
According to the Boston College Center for Retirement Research, the percentage of workers in America covered by a traditional pension plan fell from 62 percent in 1983 to 17 percent in 2007.
That isn’t just a trend.
That is a tidal wave.
And many of the private pension plans that still exist are massively underfunded. For example, Verizon’s pension plan is underfunded by 3.4 billion dollars.
So what should Americans do in light of all this?
Well, the number one thing to realize is that the pension plan you have been counting on could disappear at any time.
We live in an economic environment that is extremely unstable, and about the only thing you can count on in this environment is rapid and dramatic change.
Do not plan your financial future around a pension plan. If you do, you are likely to be bitterly disappointed.
Americans that plan to retire in the coming years should do their best to try to fund their own retirements.
Unfortunately, most Americans are not putting away much of anything for retirement. As I have written about previously, one study found that American workers are $6.6 trillion short of what they need to retire comfortably.
Ouch.
Over the next 20 years approximately 10,000 Baby Boomers will be retiring every single day.
A lot of them are going to be blindsided by empty pension funds and broken promises.
We are facing a retirement crisis of unprecedented magnitude, and there is not much hope in sight.
And if there is a major stock market crash, things are going to be much, much worse.
Most pension funds and retirement plans are heavily invested in the stock market. If we were to see a major financial crisis like we saw back in 2008 it would be absolutely devastating. Millions of Americans could see their retirement plans wiped out in short order.
Once again, please do not place your faith in the system.
If you do, you are likely to end up holding a bag of broken promises.
A gigantic tsunami of unfunded pension obligations is coming. A lot of state and local governments are going to go broke. A lot of promises are going to be broken.
If you hope to retire any time soon, you better plan on being able to take care of yourself.
If you increased your credit card spending by a couple thousand dollars per month would your lifestyle improve? Of course it would. By going into large amounts of debt, it is possible to live a lifestyle that you can’t really afford, at least for a while. But if you keep racking up huge amounts of credit card debt every single month, eventually it gets to a point where it is extremely difficult to even keep up with the minimum monthly payments and the credit card companies will not lend you any more money. Well, on a larger scale it is the same thing with government debt. Right now, the U.S. government is spending more than a trillion dollars more than it takes in every year. Even if the U.S. government spends all of that money on incredibly stupid stuff, it still gets into the pockets of ordinary Americans. In turn, those ordinary Americans use that money to pay the mortgage, buy food, shop at the mall, etc. All of this borrowing and spending by the U.S. government has created a “false prosperity” bubble that is not real. It may feel real to you right now, but it is unsustainable by definition. If the U.S. government suddenly started spending only the money that it actually brought in every year, our economy would be doomed and all of this “false prosperity” would rapidly disappear. But if the U.S. government continues to rack up debt at this pace we are doomed as well. In fact, every dollar that gets borrowed makes our eventual collapse ever worse. We are heading down the exact same road that Greece has gone. Eventually the rest of the world is not going to lend us gigantic mountains of super cheap money anymore. When the flow of cheap money stops, it can be extremely painful. Anyone that has ever seen the interest rates on their credit cards go above 20 percent knows how this feels. If we had addressed these problems as a nation a decade or two ago, perhaps we could have found a solution. But now there is no way out under our current financial system and a devastating economic collapse is on the horizon no matter what we do.
If there was a Hollywood movie where some crooks successfully stole 150 million dollars, what would you think of those crooks?
Would you have admiration for them?
Would you be disgusted with them?
Would you feel like your intelligence was insulted because nobody could ever steal 150 million dollars and get away with it?
Well, right now the federal government is stealing approximately 150 million dollars from our children and our grandchildren every single hour.
That’s right – the U.S. government is borrowing an astounding 150 million dollars an hour that our children and our grandchildren will be expected to deal with.
It is a theft so vast that it is almost unimaginable.
So what should be done?
A lot of people out there think that our problems would be solved if the government would just quit borrowing so much money.
Well, it is just not that simple.
Look at Greece. They were forced by the EU and the IMF to dramatically reduce government spending. But when Greece reduced government spending, that caused the economy to shrink rapidly and it caused tax receipts to go down more than expected. So Greek budget deficits were even larger than anticipated and so Greece was forced to cut spending even more. But that created even more economic problems.
A recent article by John Mauldin described the nightmarish effect that this cycle has had on Greece….
And as Greece began shake and bake its way to “austerity,” the very act of cutting deficits pushed the country into recession, which lowered tax revenues and increased expenses, putting the elusive goal of a balanced budget even further off. We should quickly note that this is not just a Greek problem. Spain’s “draconian” cuts have meant that its 6% deficit target for the year has this week been raised to a more likely 8%, making it harder to get back to even.
For country after country, this is the Endgame. It is the end of the Debt Supercycle. Debt has grown to the size that it cannot be sustained. The market will not lend any more money on terms that can be afforded, and any efforts to cut spending and raise taxes will result in an even worse economy, in various degrees of recession, with falling revenues and rising costs.
This is what happens when a country that has been spending far beyond its means is forced to dramatically cut back.
Those that are convinced that balancing the federal budget in the United States will be relatively painless should take a close look at what is happening in Greece.
As I have written about previously, the Greek economy has been plunged into a 21st century “Great Depression”. In Greece, 20 percent of all retail stores have already shut down, the unemployment rate for those under the age of 24 is sitting at 39 percent, and one third of the entire nation is living in poverty.
And this is only just the beginning for Greece.
Things are going to get even worse.
Unfortunately, many believe that the United States is destined to experience far worse pain than Greece is currently experiencing.
For example, Peter Schiff insists that the United States is in worse financial shape than Europe at this point. Just check out this video….
Anyone that attempts to downplay the U.S. debt problem is making a serious mistake. Yes, we are still able to borrow trillions of dollars for next to nothing, but that is going to come to an end.
Remember all of those “suckers” that signed up for mortgages at “teaser rates” that later got jacked up dramatically?
Of course you do.
So what happened to them?
When the rates went up many of them ended up losing everything.
Well, we have gotten ourselves into the exact same kind of a position. All of this cheap money has enabled us to live very nicely for now, but when the cheap money ends the nightmare will begin.
Right now, our debt is growing much, much faster than our economy is. Between 2007 and 2010, U.S. GDP grew by only 4.26%, but the U.S. national debt soared by 61% during that same time period.
What would your household finances look like if your total debt grew by 61 percent next year but your income only grew by 4 percent?
When I was a little boy, the U.S. national debt was considered to be a huge national crisis. Politicians from both major political parties were promising that they would fix things.
During 2011, the federal government went into more debt than the U.S. government accumulated from the time that George Washington became president to the time that Ronald Reagan became president.
That is utter insanity, and yet most Americans have become convinced that this is “normal” and that there is nothing to worry about.
It is hard to grasp how much money a trillion dollars is.
If right this moment you went out and started spending one dollar every single second, it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.
That is how much money a trillion dollars is.
And things look even worse when you look at the balance sheet of the U.S. government.
But it is not just the federal government that has been living a fantasy.
The chart posted below shows the growth of total debt in America over the past several decades. Consumers, businesses and government officials have been on a debt binge that is absolutely unprecedented….
The scary thing is that even with all of this borrowed money, our economy is still in the dumps.
So what in the world is it going to look like when the debt bubble totally bursts?
Even with all of this “borrowed prosperity”, anger at the government is rapidly growing. A recent Gallup poll found that “satisfaction with government” in the United States is now at an all-time record low of 29 percent.
So how angry will the American people be when all of this “borrowed prosperity” disappears?
When this whole thing comes tumbling down, a lot of people are going to blame our problems on “capitalism”.
In fact, it is already happening. Just check out what the founder of the World Economic Forum is saying….
“We have a general morality gap, we are over-leveraged, we have neglected to invest in the future, we have undermined social coherence, and we are in danger of completely losing the confidence of future generations,” said Klaus Schwab, host and founder of the annual World Economic Forum.
“Solving problems in the context of outdated and crumbling models will only dig us deeper into the hole.
“We are in an era of profound change that urgently requires new ways of thinking instead of more business-as-usual,” the 73-year-old said, adding that “capitalism in its current form, has no place in the world around us.”
But capitalism is not the problem. Capitalism has produced the greatest eras of prosperity that the world has ever seen.
No, the real problem is our debt-based financial system that is managed and run by the central banks of the world.
You see, debt-based central banking is not capitalism. But way too many people equate the two.
A lot of people cannot even imagine this, but theoretically you could have capitalism without any debt whatsoever.
But what we have today is a financial system that has debt as the very foundation. And such a system is inevitably going to fail someday.
As I have written about so many times before, the Federal Reserve is at the very heart of our economic problems here in the United States.
The Federal Reserve was designed to be a perpetual debt machine. And it has performed that task very well. The U.S. national debt is now more than 5000 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was first created.
So yes, even though things seem somewhat “stable” for the moment, there are all kinds of reasons to be concerned about the viability of our economy and our financial system in the years ahead.
The other day, I was quoted in a Reuters article about our coming economic problems….
“Most people have a gut feeling that something has gone terribly wrong, but that doesn’t mean that they understand what is happening,” he said. “A lot of Americans sense that a massive economic storm is coming and they want to be prepared for it.”
Of course the Reuters reporter did not even bother to spell my name correctly, but at least he got the quote right.
A great economic storm is coming.
Don’t let this false prosperity and this “calm before the storm” fool you.
We are living in the greatest debt bubble the world has ever seen, and no matter how it plays out there is going to be a massive amount of pain.
You might want to get yourself and your family prepared for that.
We have all been lied to. For decades, the leaders of both major political parties have promised us that they can fix our current system and that they can get our national debt under control. As the 2012 election approaches, they are making all kinds of wild promises once again. Well you know what? It is all a giant sham. The United States has gotten into so much debt that there will be no coming back from this. The current system is irretrievably broken. 30 years ago the U.S. debt was a horrific crisis that was completely and totally out of control. If we would have dealt with it back then maybe we could have done something about it. But now it is 15 times larger, and we are adding more than a trillion dollars to the debt every single year. The facts that you are about to read below should set America on fire with anger. Please share them with as many people as you can. What we are doing to our children and our grandchildren is absolutely nightmarish. Words like “abuse”, “financial rape”, “theft” and “crime” do not even begin to describe what we are doing to future generations. We were the wealthiest nation on earth, but it wasn’t good enough just to squander all of our own money. We had to squander the money of our children and our grandchildren as well. America has been so selfish and so self-centered that it is hard to argue that we don’t deserve what is about to happen to this country. We have stolen the future of America, and yet we strut around as if we are the smartest generation that ever walked the face of the earth.
All of this prosperity that we see all around us is just an illusion. It is a false prosperity that has been purchased by the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world.
Did you know that if you added up all forms of debt in the United States and divided it up equally that every single family in the country would owe more than $683,000?
We are a nation that is absolutely addicted to debt, and the U.S. debt crisis threatens to destroy everything that our forefathers built.
Yes, everything may seem fine for the moment, but what do you think would happen if the federal government suddenly adopted a balanced budget?
1.3 trillion dollars a year would be sucked right out of the economy and we would be looking at an “economic readjustment” that would be mind blowing.
Enjoy this false prosperity while you can, because it is not going to last.
Debt is a very cruel master, and our day of reckoning is almost here.
The following are 34 shocking facts about U.S. debt that should set America on fire with anger….
#3 During 2011, U.S. debt surpassed 100 percent of GDP for the first time ever.
#4 According to Wikipedia, the monetary base “consists of coins, paper money (both as bank vault cash and as currency circulating in the public), and commercial banks’ reserves with the central bank.” Currently the U.S. monetary base is sitting somewhere around 2.7 trillion dollars. So if you went out and gathered all of that money up it would only make a small dent in our national debt. But afterwards there would be no currency for anyone to use.
#5 The U.S. government spent over 454 billion dollars just on interest on the national debt during fiscal 2011.
#7 During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.
#8 It is being projected that the U.S. national debt will surpass 23 trillion dollars in 2015.
#9 According to the GAO, the U.S. government is facing 34 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities for social insurance programs such as Social Security and Medicare. These are obligations that we have already committed ourselves to but that we do not have any money for.
#10 Others estimate that the unfunded liabilities of the U.S. government now total over 117 trillion dollars.
#11 According to the GAO, the ratio of debt held by the public to GDP is projected to reach 287 percent of GDP by 2086.
#13 The United States government is responsible for more than a third of all the government debt in the entire world.
#14 If you divide up the national debt equally among all U.S. taxpayers, each taxpayer would owe approximately $134,685.
#15 Mandatory federal spending surpassed total federal revenue for the first time ever in fiscal 2011. That was not supposed to happen until 50 years from now.
#16 Between 2007 and 2010, U.S. GDP grew by only 4.26%, but the U.S. national debt soared by 61% during that same time period.
#18 When you add up all spending by the federal government, state governments and local governments, it comes to 46.6% of GDP.
#19 Our nation is more addicted to government checks than ever before. In 1980, government transfer payments accounted for just 11.7% of all income. Today, government transfer payments account for 18.4% of all income.
#21 A staggering 48.5% of all Americans live in a household that receives some form of government benefits. Back in 1983, that number was below 30 percent.
#22 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.
#23 In 1950, each retiree’s Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 U.S. workers. According to new data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are now only 1.75 full-time private sector workers for each person that is receiving Social Security benefits in the United States.
#24 The U.S. government now says that the Medicare trust fund will run out five years faster than they were projecting just last year.
#25 Right now, spending by the federal government accounts for about 24 percent of GDP. Back in 2001, it accounted for just 18 percent.
#26 If the U.S. government was forced to use GAAP accounting principles (like all publicly-traded corporations must), the U.S. government budget deficit would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 trillion to $5 trillion each and every year.
#27 If you were alive when Christ was born and you spent one million dollars every single day since that point, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars by now. But this year alone the U.S. government is going to add more than a trillion dollars to the national debt.
#28 If right this moment you went out and started spending one dollar every single second, it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.
#29 A trillion $10 bills, if they were taped end to end, would wrap around the globe more than 380 times. That amount of money would still not be enough to pay off the U.S. national debt.
#30 If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 470,000 years to pay off the national debt.
#31 If Bill Gates gave every penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for 15 days.
#32 According to Professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff, the U.S. is facing a “fiscal gap” of over 200 trillion dollars in the future. The following is a brief excerpt from a recent article that he did for CNN….
The government’s total indebtedness — its fiscal gap — now stands at $211 trillion, by my arithmetic. The fiscal gap is the difference, measured in present value, between all projected future spending obligations — including our huge defense expenditures and massive entitlement programs, as well as making interest and principal payments on the official debt — and all projected future taxes.
#33 If you add up all forms of debt in the United States (government, business and consumer), it comes to more than 56 trillion dollars. That is more than $683,000 per family. Unfortunately, the average amount of savings per family in the U.S. is only about $4,735.
#34 The U.S. national debt is now more than 5000 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was created back in 1913.
But do our leaders care about statistics such as these?
No.
In fact, Barack Obama says that we need to raise the debt limit by another 1.2 trillion dollars.
The absurdity of raising the debt limit when we are already in so much debt is beautifully illustrated by the video posted below….
I just thought that video was so well done.
The “huge cuts” that Congress has agreed to are absolutely meaningless when compared to how rapidly our debt is exploding.
Calling those cuts “pocket change” would be an insult to pocket change.
But it is not just U.S. debt that is the problem. The European debt crisis threatens to completely unravel in 2012 and Japan actually has the highest debt to GDP ratio in the entire industrialized world.
In 2012, a total of 7,600,000,000,000 dollars of debt must be rolled over by the G-7 nations, Brazil, Russia, India and China.
That doesn’t even count new borrowing. That number just represents old debts that are coming due that must be refinanced.
Anyone out there that insists that this debt bubble can be fixed under our current system is lying.
A massive amount of financial pain is coming.
It is time for Americans to wake up from their television-induced comas.
It is time for Americans to get very angry.
Your future has been destroyed and the future of your children and grandchildren has been destroyed.
Well, it is time to raise the debt ceiling again. Right now we are about to hit the current limit of $15.194 trillion and the Obama administration is going to ask that it be raised by another 1.2 trillion dollars. Unfortunately, Congress has already promised not to stand in the way, and so soon the debt limit will be raised to a staggering $16.394 trillion. Considering how much debt we have already placed on the backs of future generations, what is another 1.2 trillion dollars? After all, if we are going to sell our children and our grandchildren into debt slavery, we might as well go all the way, right? Such is the thinking in “the Obama Nation”. During “the Obama Nation”, the federal government has already accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office. Of course the Bush administration was nearly as bad at piling up government debt. Between Bush and Obama (with a big helping hand from the Federal Reserve), they have done a pretty good job of wiping out the financial future of the United States. If there are future generations of Americans, they will look back and curse those that did this to them. It is absolutely immoral to steal trillions of dollars from future generations. Unfortunately, there are very, very few members of Congress that are even objecting to this madness.
Today, more debt just seems to be the answer to everything. The truth is that debt is not just a government problem. We are a nation that is addicted to debt.
As of October, total consumer credit in the United States had increased for 12 of the past 13 months. We simply have not learned the lessons of the past and we are making the same mistakes all over again.
We are living in the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world, and this false prosperity that we are enjoying is simply not sustainable.
But even in the midst of this false prosperity we are seeing a huge number of store closings.
For example, it was just announced that Sears has decided to close between 100 and 120 Sears and Kmart stores.
Once upon a time, Sears was the dominant force in the retail industry, but those days are long gone. Sears stock has declined more than 45 percent so far this year, and many are wondering how long the company is going to be able to survive.
And there have been other high profile store closings announced during this holiday season as well. A while back it was announced that all Syms stores and all Filene’s Basement stores will be closing.
Will we all eventually be relegated to shopping only at Wal-Mart?
In the middle of this “economic recovery” that Obama keeps talking about a staggering number of retail stores are closing up shop. The following is a list of store closings in 2011 that I recently found. The first number represents the total number of stores being closed for each chain….
405 Blockbuster
633 Borders
200 GameStop
189 Gap
160 f.y.e.
117 Anchor Blue
117 Foot Locker
100 Talbot’s
71 A.J. Wright
69 Metropark
63 Friendly’s
60 Rite Aid
52 Destination Maternity
50 Abercrombie & Fitch
50 Hot Topic
45 Big Lots
45 Family Dollar
43 Select Comfort
43 Sonic Drive-In
35 Denny’s
32 Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, Inc. (SuperFresh, Pathmark Super Market)
Sadly, it looks like things are going to get even worse next year. One consulting firm is projecting that there will be more than 5,000 store closings in 2012.
The United States is piling up unprecedented amounts of new debt at a time when our economy is dying and our ability to produce wealth is diminishing.
All over America right now, poverty is absolutely exploding. Millions of people that never dreamed that they would have to reach out for help now find that they have no other options. The following comes from a recent article in the Fiscal Times….
For years, the food pantry in Crystal Lake, Ill., a bedroom community 50 miles west of Chicago, has catered to the suburban areas’ poor, homeless and unemployed. But Cate Williams, the head of the pantry, has noticed a striking change in the makeup of the needy in the past year or two. Some families that once pulled down six-figure incomes and drove flashy cars are now turning to the pantry for help. A few of them donated food and money to the pantry before their luck soured, according to Williams.
“People will shyly say to me, ‘You know, I used to give money and food to you guys. Now I need your help,’” Williams told The Fiscal Times last week. “Most of the folks we see now are people who never took a handout before. They were comfortable, able to feed themselves, to keep gas in the car, and keep a nice roof over their head.”
But not everyone will ask for help nicely. As the economic numbers continue to get worse, desperate Americans will lash out in wild and unpredictable ways.
The following is from a local NBC station down in Texas. In the days to come, this type of report will become quite common….
A 19-year-old Houston-area man says he was beaten and a friend was slashed in the face as a group of men robbed him of his new pair of expensive Air Jordan shoes.
We will also see more mass protests and more mass riots as the months and years roll along. This country is going to become increasingly unstable.
Check out this video of a massive brawl that erupted inside Mall of America the other day. Soon scenes such as this will become so common that they will not even be newsworthy anymore.
In response, many Americans will get sick and tired of waiting for the police to protect them and will take matters into their own hands.
In fact, we are already starting to see this. For example, just the other day a store clerk down in North Carolina knocked a would-be robber out cold and then forced him to clean up his own blood after he woke up.
There are millions of Americans out there that are not going to put up with a whole lot of nonsense. When desperate criminals try to rob from their homes or businesses it might not end well for the criminals.
Of course it would be much nicer if the federal government would do some things to actually fix the economy and avoid some the problems that are looming on the horizon.
Ah, but that would interrupt their vacations. Right now, the U.S. House of Representatives is on vacation until mid-January.
If you can believe it, Congress does not work for most of the year. Normally they are scheduled to be in session for about a third of all the days on the calendar.
And Obama is certainly taking it easy. He is enjoying yet another vacation. As I wrote about yesterday, it has been estimated that the Obama Hawaiian vacation this year will cost somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 million dollars.
Yes, it is tough being the head of the Obama Nation.
Sadly, a lot of Americans still have faith in these jokers.
According to a Gallup poll that was just released, Barack Obama is the most admired man in America by far and Hillary Clinton is the most admired woman in America by far. If you can believe it, Barack Obama has held the top spot for men for four years in a row, and Hillary Clinton has held the top spot for women for ten years in a row.
When are we going to learn?
Someone once said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Well, the American people keep sending corrupt politicians such as Bush and Obama to the White House and they keep expecting things to get better.
It just isn’t going to happen.
If we stay on the current path that we are on, there will be a lot more store closings, the economy will continue to crumble and government debt will continue to skyrocket.
Minor changes are not going to cut it. We need massive changes on a fundamental level.
Unfortunately, neither political party is offering massive changes. The Republicans and the Democrats just keep offering the same tired solutions and they keep promising that they can “fix things” if we will just send more of them to Washington.
Hopefully the American people will wake up and see through these lies because time is running out.
What happens when you attempt a cold shutdown of one of the biggest debt spirals that the world has ever seen? Well, we are about to find out. The politicians in Europe have decided that they are going to “take their medicine” and put strict limits on budget deficits. They have also decided that the European Central Bank is not going to engage in reckless money printing to “paper over” the debts of troubled nations. This may all sound wonderful to many of you, but the reality is that there is always a tremendous amount of pain whenever a massive debt spiral is interrupted. Just look at what happened to Greece. Greece was forced to raise taxes and implement brutal austerity measures. That caused the economy to slow down and tax revenues to decline and so government debt figures did not improve as much as anticipated. So Greece was forced to implement even more brutal austerity measures. Well, that caused the economy to slow down even more and tax revenues declined again. In Greece this cycle has been repeated several times and now Greece is experiencing a full-blown economic depression. 100,000 businesses have closed and a third of the population is living in poverty. But now Germany and France intend to impose the “Greek solution” on the rest of Europe. This is going to create the conditions needed for a “perfect storm” to develop and it means that the European financial system is heading for an implosion of historic proportions.
The easiest way to deal with a debt spiral is to let it keep going and going. That is what the United States has done. Sure, “kicking the can down the road” makes the crisis much worse in the long run, but bringing the pain into the present is not a lot of fun either.
Europe has decided to do something that is unprecedented in the post-World War II era. They have decided to put very strict limits on budget deficits and to impose tough sanctions on any nations that break the rules. They have also decided that they are not going to allow the European Central Bank to fund the debts of troubled nations with reckless money printing.
Without a doubt, this is a German solution for a German-dominated Europe. Germany does not want to pay for the debt mistakes of other EU nations, and so they are shoving bitter austerity down the throats of those that have gotten into too much debt.
But this solution is not going to be implemented without a massive amount of pain.
In fact, this solution is going to make a massive financial collapse much more likely. The following are 17 signs that the European financial system is heading for an implosion of historic proportions….
#1 As noted above, when you reduce government spending you also slow down the economy. We have already seen what brutal austerity has done to Greece – 100,000 businesses have shut down, a third of the population is living in poverty and there is rioting in the streets. Now that brand of brutal austerity is going to be imposed in almost every single nation in Europe.
#2 As the economy slows down in Europe, unemployment will rise. There are already 10 different European nations that have an “official” unemployment rate of over 10 percent and the next recession has not even officially started yet.
#3 Before it is all said and done, the EU nations that are drowning in debt will likely need trillions of euros in bailout money just to survive. But at this point Germany and the other wealthy nations of northern Europe are sick and tired of bailouts and do not plan to hand over trillions of euros.
#4 The European Central Bank could theoretically print up trillions of euros and buy up massive amounts of European sovereign debt, but this would go against existing treaties and most of the major politicians in Europe are steadfastly against this right now. But without such intervention it is hard to see how the ECB will be able to keep bond yields from absolutely skyrocketing for long. In fact, without massive ECB intervention it is hard to see how the eurozone is going to be able to stay together at all. Graeme Leach, the chief economist at the Institute of Directors, said the following recently….
“Unless the ECB begins to operate as a sovereign lender of last resort function, with massive purchases of eurozone public debt, the inexorable logic is that the eurozone will break up.”
#5 European leaders are hoping that the new treaty that was just agreed to will be ratified by the end of the summer. In reality, it will probably take much longer than that. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has made it clear that the solution to this debt crisis is going to take a long time to implement….
“It’s a process, and this process will take years.”
Unfortunately, Europe does not have years. Europe is rapidly running out of time. A massive financial crisis is steamrolling right at them and they need solutions right now.
#6 Sadly, the cold, hard reality of the matter is that none of the fundamental problems that Europe is facing were fixed by this recent “agreement” as Ambrose Evans-Pritchard recently noted in one of his columns….
There is no shared debt issuance, no fiscal transfers, no move to an EU Treasury, no banking licence for the ESM rescue fund, and no change in the mandate of the European Central Bank.
In short, there is no breakthrough of any kind that will convince Asian investors that this monetary union has viable governance or even a future.
Germany has kept the focus exclusively on fiscal deficits even though everybody must understand by now that this crisis was not caused by fiscal deficits (except in the case of Greece). Spain and Ireland were in surplus, and Italy had a primary surplus.
#7 Nobody wants to lend to European banks right now. Everyone knows that there are dozens of European banks in danger of failing, and nobody wants to throw any more money into those black holes. The U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank have been lending them money, but a lot of European banks are already starting to run out of “acceptable forms of collateral” for those loans as one Australian news source recently explained….
“If anyone thinks things are getting better, they simply don’t understand how severe the problems are,” a London executive at a global bank said. “A major bank could fail within weeks.”
Others said many continental banks, including French, Italian and Spanish lenders, were close to running out of the acceptable forms of collateral, such as US Treasury bonds, that could be used to finance short-term loans.
Some have been forced to lend out their gold reserves to maintain access to US dollar funding.
So will the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank keep lending them money once they are out of acceptable collateral?
If not, we could start to see banks fail in rapid succession.
Charles Wyplosz, a professor of international economics at Geneva’s Graduate Institute, is absolutely certain that we are going to see some major European banks collapse….
“Banks will collapse, including possibly a number of French banks that are very exposed to Greece, Portugal, Italy and Spain.”
#8 Not only does nobody want to lend money to them, major banks all over Europe are also dramatically cutting back on lending to consumers and businesses as they attempt to meet new capital-adequacy requirements by next June.
According to renowned financial journalist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, European banks need to reduce the amount of lending on their books by about 7 trillion dollars in order to get down to safe levels….
Europe’s banks face a $7 trillion lending contraction to bring their balance sheets in line with the US and Japan, threatening to trap the region in a credit crunch and chronic depression for a decade.
When nobody wants to lend to the banks, and when the banks severely cut back on lending to others, that is called a “credit crunch”. In such an environment, it is incredibly difficult to avoid a major recession.
#9 European banks are absolutely overloaded with “toxic assets” that they are desperate to get rid of. Just as we saw with U.S. banks back in 2008, major European banks are busy trying to unload mountains of worthless assets that have a book value of trillions of euros. Unfortunately for the banks, virtually nobody wants to buy them.
#10 European bond yields are still incredibly high even though the European Central Bank has spent over 274 billion dollars buying up European government bonds.
Up until now, the European Central Bank has been taking money out of the system (by taking deposits or by selling assets for example) whenever it injects new money into the system by buying bonds. That makes this different from the quantitative easing that the U.S. Federal Reserve has done. But at some point the European Central Bank is going to run out of ways to take money out of the system, and when that happens either the Germans will have to allow the ECB to print money out of thin air to buy bonds with or we will finally see the market determine the true value of European government bonds.
#11 Bond yields are going to become even more important in 2012, because huge mountains of European sovereign debt are scheduled to be rolled over next year. For example, Italy must roll over approximately 20 percent of its entire sovereign debt during 2012.
#12 Once the new treaty is ratified, eurozone governments will lose the power to respond to a major recession by dramatically increasing government spending. So if the governments of Europe cannot spend more money in response to the coming financial crisis, and if the ECB cannot print more money in response to the coming financial crisis, then what is going to keep the coming recession from turning into a full-blown depression?
#13 Credit rating agencies are warning that more credit downgrades may be coming in Europe. For example, Moody’s recently stated the following….
“While our central scenario remains that the euro area will be preserved without further widespread defaults, shocks likely to materialise even under this ‘positive’ scenario carry negative credit and rating implications in the coming months. And the longer the incremental approach to policy persists, the greater the likelihood of more severe scenarios, including those involving multiple defaults by euro area countries and those additionally involving exits from the euro area.”
#14 S&P has put 15 members of the eurozone (including Germany) on review for a possible credit downgrade.
#15 The stock prices of many major European banks are in the process of collapsing. If you doubt this, just check out the charts in this article.
#16 Bank runs have begun in some parts of Europe. For example, a recent article posted on Yahoo News described what has been going on in Latvia….
Latvia’s largest bank scrambled Monday to head off a run among depositors who were gripped by rumours of the bank’s imminent ruin.
Weekend rumours that Swedbank was facing legal and liquidity problems in Estonia and Sweden sent thousands of Latvians to bank machines on Sunday, with some lines reaching as many as 50 people.
The Greek banking system is literally on the verge of collapse. According to a recent Der Spiegel article, the run on Greek banks is rapidly accelerating….
He means that the outflow of funds from Greek bank accounts has been accelerating rapidly. At the start of 2010, savings and time deposits held by private households in Greece totalled €237.7 billion — by the end of 2011, they had fallen by €49 billion. Since then, the decline has been gaining momentum. Savings fell by a further €5.4 billion in September and by an estimated €8.5 billion in October — the biggest monthly outflow of funds since the start of the debt crisis in late 2009.
#17 There are already signs that European economic activisty (as well as global economic activity) is really starting to slow down. Just consider the following statistics from a recent article by Stephen Lendman….
In November, French business confidence fell for the eighth consecutive month. In October, Japanese machinery orders dropped 6.9%, following an 8.2% plunge in September.
South Africa just reported a 5.6% drop in manufacturing activity. Britain recorded a 0.7% decline. China’s October exports fell 1.7% after dropping 3.8% in September.
Korea’s exports are down three consecutive months. Singapore’s were off in September and October. Indonesia’s plunged 8.5% in October after slipping 2% in September. India’s imploded 18.3% after being flat in September.
Are you starting to get the picture?
Europe is in a massive amount of trouble.
The equation is simple….
Brutal austerity + toxic levels of government debt + rising bond yields + a lack of confidence in the financial system + banks that are massively overleveraged + a massive credit crunch = A financial implosion of historic proportions
Unless something truly dramatic happens, the economy of Europe is a dead duck.
There is no way that Europe is going to be able to substantially reduce the flow of money coming from national governments and substantially reduce the flow of money coming from the banks and still be able to avoid a major recession.
Look, I want it to be very clear that I am in no way advocating government debt in this article. It is just that under the debt-based monetary paradigm that we are all operating under, there is no way that you can dramatically reduce government spending without experiencing a whole lot of pain.
An economic “perfect storm” is developing in Europe. All of the things that need to happen for a major recession to occur are falling into place.
So does anyone out there disagree with me? Does anyone think that Europe is going to be just fine?
Please feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts below….
How do you decide whether you are wealthy or not? Do you determine that by how much money you spend at the stores? Of course not. You can tell if you are wealthy or not by comparing your assets (the money in your bank account, equity in your home, etc.) to your liabilities (your mortgage, credit card debt, student loan debt, etc.). Well, a lot of Americans seem to believe that just because a lot of money is circulating in our economy that it must mean that we are a wealthy nation. But that is simply not true. To tell whether or not America is a wealthy nation, you need to look at the balance sheet numbers. And when you look at the balance sheet numbers, a very sobering story emerges. Over the past three decades, government debt, business debt and household debt have absolutely exploded, but our assets have not. That means that we are getting poorer as a nation. Hopefully the shocking charts and statistics in this article will help a lot of Americans to wake up. Yes, we once were the wealthiest nation on earth, but today America is no longer a wealthy nation.
Household Wealth
We live during a time when U.S. households are becoming poorer. This week the Federal Reserve announced that the total net worth of U.S. households declined by 4.1 percent in the 3rd quarter of 2011 alone.
That is a staggering decline. The total net worth of U.S. households plummeted by $2.2 trillion during those three months. When you break that down, it comes to approximately $7,800 for every single U.S. citizen.
But this is not the first time we have seen a huge decline in U.S. household wealth in recent years.
A recent article posted on CNN detailed the stunning drop in U.S. household wealth that we saw from 2007 to 2009….
Household wealth plunged $16.3 trillion in the two years from early 2007 to the first quarter of 2009, and has slowly been climbing since then. But with the drop in the third quarter of this year, households find their net worth still $9.4 trillion, or 14%, below the high they hit in early 2007, before the bursting of the housing bubble.
So right now the total net worth of U.S. households is $9.4 trillion below what it was back in 2007.
That certainly is not good news.
But not only is the total net worth of U.S. households going down, our incomes are going down as well.
Since December 2007, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8% once you account for inflation.
Not that incomes were rising very quickly prior to that time either.
Between 1979 and 2007, income growth for the bottom 90 percent of all U.S. income earners was only about 5 percent for that entire time period.
Meanwhile, household debt was absolutely skyrocketing. Take a look at the following chart which shows what total U.S. household debt has done over the last three decades….
So income growth has been pretty much flat over the past three decades but household debt has been rising at an exponential pace for most of that time.
Yes, there has been a little bit of deleveraging during this economic downturn, but there are now signs that the deleveraging is rapidly coming to an end.
According to a recent CNN article, credit card use in the United States is experiencing a major upswing once again….
Purchases made with credit cards rose 8.2% in the first quarter of 2011, 9% in the second quarter and 10.6% in the third quarter, according to First Data.
That is not good news.
The truth is that U.S. households owe way, way too much money already. According to a recent study conducted by the BlackRock Investment Institute, the ratio of household debt to personal income in the United States is now 154 percent.
We are up to our eyeballs in debt, and our incomes are not keeping up.
In addition, we have seen massive amounts of home equity wiped out in recent years.
An unusual thing has happened during this economic downturn. For the first time in U.S. history, the banks have more equity in our homes than we do. If you do not believe this, just check out this chart.
The truth is that the American people are not becoming wealthier. They are becoming poorer.
And a shocking number of Americans are falling into poverty. In 2010, 2.6 million more Americans fell into poverty, which set a new all-time record for a single year.
But this is not a new thing. This is a trend that we have seen building for many years. Back in the year 2000, 11.3% of all Americans were living in poverty. Today, 15.1% of all Americans are living in poverty.
So obviously U.S. households are not doing well.
But what about the government?
Government Debt
The U.S. national debt is completely and totally out of control. Right now it is sitting at $15,046,397,725,405.16. That means that it is nearly 15 times higher than it was just 30 years ago. Just check out this almost unbelievable chart….
So is our ability to pay these debts 15 times greater than it was back then?
Of course not.
Our liabilities are exploding at an out of control rate but our assets are not.
Whether you are a running a family or running a government, that is a recipe for financial disaster.
The U.S. government has been running budget deficits of over a trillion dollars for several years now, and there is no sign that these trillion dollar deficits are going to stop any time soon.
So how much money is a trillion dollars?
If right this moment you went out and started spending one dollar every single second, it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.
Yet somehow the U.S. government has accumulated a debt that is well over 15 trillion dollars.
The Bush administration was a nightmare when it came to running up debt, but they have definitely been outclassed by the Obama administration….
*During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.
*The U.S. national debt has been increasing by an average of more than 4 billion dollars per day since the beginning of the Obama administration.
*Since Barack Obama was sworn in, the share of the national debt per household has increased by $35,835.
And most U.S. government spending does not do a thing to build real wealth for this country. For example, the total compensation that the federal government workforce brought in during 2010 is estimated to be about 447 billion dollars.
So did federal workers create 447 billion dollars of real wealth last year?
Of course not.
The truth is that our bloated federal government is a massive drain on our society.
But the federal government is not the only one with a debt problem.
State and local governments all over America are also drowning in debt. In fact, state and local government debt in America is now sitting at an all-time high of 22 percent of U.S. GDP.
Total Debt
The following chart from the Federal Reserve combines government debt, business debt and consumer debt. As you can see, America is swimming in an ocean of more than 50 trillion dollars of debt….
To get an idea of how bad that is, just look at where total debt was at back in 1970 or 1980.
Over the last three decades we have seen an orgy of debt that has been absolutely unprecedented.
Meanwhile, we are bleeding national wealth at a staggering rate.
Every single month, tens of billions of dollars more goes out of this country than comes into it.
In fact, it is being projected that the U.S. trade deficit for 2011 will be 558.2 billion dollars.
This represents a transfer of wealth that is so vast that it is almost impossible to believe.
Our dependence on foreign oil is greatly contributing to this. It is being projected that for the first time ever, the OPEC nations are going to bring in over a trillion dollars from exporting oil this year. Their biggest customer is the United States.
When we send hundreds of billions of dollars overseas, that is hundreds of billions of dollars that does not go into the pockets of American business owners or American workers.
The United States has had a negative trade balance every single year since 1976, and since that time the United States has run a total trade deficit of more than 7.5 trillion dollars with the rest of the world.
For a moment, imagine a giant map of the world. Then imagine a pile of 7.5 trillion dollars sitting on the United States of America.
That looks pretty good, eh?
Well, then start taking big chunks of that money and start exchanging it for oil and for cheap plastic products until the entire pile is gone.
Are you starting to understand?
We burn up the foreign oil in our cars and most of the cheap plastic products end up being discarded fairly quickly.
But our loss of national wealth is permanent.
Meanwhile, we are facing national financial obligations in the years ahead that are absolutely nightmarish.
According to Boston University Professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff, the U.S. government is facing a “fiscal gap” of $211 trillion in the decades ahead. The following comes from an article that Kotlikoff wrote for CNN earlier this year….
The government’s total indebtedness — its fiscal gap — now stands at $211 trillion, by my arithmetic. The fiscal gap is the difference, measured in present value, between all projected future spending obligations — including our huge defense expenditures and massive entitlement programs, as well as making interest and principal payments on the official debt — and all projected future taxes.
If you went out and liquidated all of the assets owned by all American citizens, all U.S. businesses and all levels of government in America, it would only cover about a third of that bill.
Are you starting to get the picture?
America is no longer a wealthy nation.
We are like that family down the street that is always throwing around tons of money but that is always on the verge of bankruptcy.
So when they tell you that the economy “grew” by 1 or 2 percent, please don’t think that means that America is becoming wealthier.
The truth is that our debts are growing at a far, far faster rate than our assets are.
That means that we are getting poorer.
Is there anyone out there that disagrees with that?
For those waiting for our economic problems to be solved, you can quit holding your breath. There is simply not going to be a solution to our economic problems on the national level. So why is that the case? Well, it is because the economic policies of both major political parties are very, very similar when you take a close look at them. Yes, that statement may sound downright bizarre to many Americans, but it is true. Both major political parties supported the Wall Street bailouts, both of them fully support the job-killing “free trade” globalization agenda, both of them have dramatically increased the national debt when in power, both of them fully support the currency-killing policies of the Federal Reserve, and neither major political party would get rid of the income tax and the IRS. And that is just for starters. Yes, there are some minor differences when it comes to taxing and spending between the two parties, but the truth is that they are a lot more similar on economic issues than they are different. What we desperately need on the national level is a fundamental change in direction when it comes to economic policy, but we simply are not going to get that from either the Democrats or the Republicans. That means that there is no hope that the economic storm that is coming will be averted.
Broken Promises: Pensions All Over America Are Being Savagely Cut Or Are Vanishing Completely
There simply is not enough money out there to keep all of the pension commitments that have been made. Something has got to give. In the end, millions of elderly Americans will likely be plunged into poverty as pensions disappear.
Some local governments around the nation are already declaring bankruptcy and are either eliminating pensions or are cutting them very deeply. Just check out what just happened in Central Falls, Rhode Island….
When will the math catch up with the city where you are living?
For years and years most of our state and local politicians have been ignoring this problem. But eventually a day comes when you simply cannot ignore it any longer.
Check out what Pensacola Mayor Ashton Hayward said about the situation in his city recently….
Keep in mind that taxpayers don’t get any new services for money spent on pensions. It is money that goes straight into the pockets of retired workers. State and local governments are desperately trying to pay retired workers what they are owed and fund ongoing government functions at the same time, but many have reached the breaking point.
All over the country, state and local governments are going broke. The following is from a recent article by Duff McDonald….
Things are so bad in Stockton, California that they are actually skipping debt payments….
And did you notice what is being blamed for the financial problems in Stockton?
Pension and healthcare benefits.
Sadly, we are seeing pension nightmares erupt all over the nation right now.
For example, check out what is happening to the Public School Employees’ Retirement System and State Employees’ Retirement System in Pennsylvania….
That doesn’t sound good at all.
In California, the Orange County Employees Retirement System is estimated to have a 10 billion dollar unfunded pension liability.
How in the world can a single county be facing a 10 billion dollar hole?
This is madness.
The state of Illinois is facing an unfunded pension liability of more than 77 billion dollars. Considering the fact that the state of Illinois is flat broke and on the verge of default, it is inevitable that a lot of those pension obligations will never be paid.
In fact, there are going to be a whole lot of broken promises all over the country.
Pension consultant Girard Miller 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.
That comes to about $22,000 for every single working adult in the state of California.
So where is all of that money going to come from?
But at least most state and local government employees are still covered by pension plans, even if they are failing.
In the private sector, pension plans are vanishing at lightning speed.
According to the Boston College Center for Retirement Research, the percentage of workers in America covered by a traditional pension plan fell from 62 percent in 1983 to 17 percent in 2007.
That isn’t just a trend.
That is a tidal wave.
And many of the private pension plans that still exist are massively underfunded. For example, Verizon’s pension plan is underfunded by 3.4 billion dollars.
So what should Americans do in light of all this?
Well, the number one thing to realize is that the pension plan you have been counting on could disappear at any time.
We live in an economic environment that is extremely unstable, and about the only thing you can count on in this environment is rapid and dramatic change.
Do not plan your financial future around a pension plan. If you do, you are likely to be bitterly disappointed.
Americans that plan to retire in the coming years should do their best to try to fund their own retirements.
Unfortunately, most Americans are not putting away much of anything for retirement. As I have written about previously, one study found that American workers are $6.6 trillion short of what they need to retire comfortably.
Ouch.
Over the next 20 years approximately 10,000 Baby Boomers will be retiring every single day.
A lot of them are going to be blindsided by empty pension funds and broken promises.
We are facing a retirement crisis of unprecedented magnitude, and there is not much hope in sight.
And if there is a major stock market crash, things are going to be much, much worse.
Most pension funds and retirement plans are heavily invested in the stock market. If we were to see a major financial crisis like we saw back in 2008 it would be absolutely devastating. Millions of Americans could see their retirement plans wiped out in short order.
Once again, please do not place your faith in the system.
If you do, you are likely to end up holding a bag of broken promises.
A gigantic tsunami of unfunded pension obligations is coming. A lot of state and local governments are going to go broke. A lot of promises are going to be broken.
If you hope to retire any time soon, you better plan on being able to take care of yourself.