Last week the mainstream media hailed QE3 as the “quick fix” that the U.S. economy desperately needs, but the truth is that the policies that the Federal Reserve is pursuing are going to be absolutely devastating for our senior citizens. By keeping interest rates at exceptionally low levels, the Federal Reserve is absolutely crushing savers and is systematically destroying Social Security. Meanwhile, the inflation that QE3 will cause is going to be absolutely crippling for the millions upon millions of retired Americans that are on a fixed income. Sadly, most elderly Americans have no idea what the Federal Reserve is doing to their financial futures. Most Americans that are approaching retirement age have not adequately saved for retirement, and the Social Security system that they are depending on is going to completely and totally collapse in the coming years. Right now, approximately 56 million Americans are collecting Social Security benefits. By 2035, that number is projected to grow to a whopping 91 million. By law, the Social Security trust fund must be invested in U.S. government securities. But thanks to the low interest rate policies of the Federal Reserve, the average interest rate on those securities just keeps dropping and dropping. The trustees of the Social Security system had projected that the Social Security trust fund would be completely gone by 2033, but because of the Fed policy of keeping interest rates exceptionally low for the foreseeable future it is now being projected by some analysts that Social Security will be bankrupt by 2023. Overall, the Social Security system is facing a 134 trillion dollar shortfall over the next 75 years. Yes, you read that correctly. The collapse of Social Security is inevitable, and the foolish policies of the Federal Reserve are going to make that collapse happen much more rapidly.
The only way that the Social Security system is going to be able to stay solvent is for the Social Security trust fund to earn a healthy level of interest.
By law, all money deposited in the Social Security trust fund must be invested in U.S. government securities. The following is from the official website of the Social Security Administration….
By law, income to the trust funds must be invested, on a daily basis, in securities guaranteed as to both principal and interest by the Federal government. All securities held by the trust funds are “special issues” of the United States Treasury. Such securities are available only to the trust funds.
In the past, the trust funds have held marketable Treasury securities, which are available to the general public. Unlike marketable securities, special issues can be redeemed at any time at face value. Marketable securities are subject to the forces of the open market and may suffer a loss, or enjoy a gain, if sold before maturity. Investment in special issues gives the trust funds the same flexibility as holding cash.
So in order for the Social Security Ponzi scheme to work, those investments in government securities need to produce healthy returns.
Unfortunately, the ultra-low interest rate policy of the Federal Reserve is making this impossible.
The average rate of interest earned by the Social Security trust fund has declined from 6.1 percent in January 2003 to 3.9 percent today, and it is going to continue to go even lower as long as the Fed continues to keep interest rates super low.
A recent article by Bruce Krasting detailed how this works. Just check out the following example….
$135 billion of old bonds matured this year. This money was rolled over into new bonds with a yield of only 1.375%. The average yield on the maturing securities was 5.64%. The drop in yield on the new securities lowers SSA’s income by $5.7B annually. Over the fifteen year term of the investments, that comes to a lumpy $86 billion.
So what happens when the Social Security trust fund runs dry?
As Bruce Krasting also noted, all Social Security payments would immediately be cut by 25 percent…..
Anyone who is 55 or older should be worried about this. Based on current law, all SS benefit payments must be cut by (approximately) 25% when the TF is exhausted. This will affect 72 million people. The economic consequences will be severe.
In other words, it would be a complete and total nightmare.
Sadly, the truth is that the Social Security trust fund might not even make it into the next decade. Most Social Security trust fund projections assume that there will be no recessions and that there will be a very healthy rate of growth for the U.S. economy over the next decade.
So what happens if we have another major recession or worse?
And most Americans know that something is up with Social Security. According to a Gallup survey, 67 percent of all Americans believe that there will be a Social Security crisis within 10 years.
Part of the problem is that there are way too many people retiring and not nearly enough workers to support them.
Back in 1950, each retiree’s Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 U.S. workers. But now things are much different. 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.
And remember, the number of Americans drawing on Social Security will increase by another 35 million by the year 2035.
Another factor that is rapidly becoming a major problem is the growth of the Social Security disability program.
Since 2008, 3.6 million more Americans have been added to the rolls of the Social Security disability insurance program.
Today, more than 8.7 million Americans are collecting Social Security disability payments.
So how does this compare to the past?
Back in August 1967, there were approximately 65 workers for each American that was collecting Social Security disability payments.
Today, there are only 16.2 workers for each American that is collecting Social Security disability payments.
The Social Security Ponzi scheme is rapidly approaching a crisis point.
Sadly, the Federal Reserve has made it incredibly difficult to save for your own retirement.
Millions upon millions of Baby Boomers that diligently saved money for retirement are finding that their savings accounts are paying out next to nothing thanks to the ultra-low interest rate policies of the Federal Reserve.
The following is one example of how the low interest rate policies of the Fed have completely devastated the retirement plans of many elderly Americans….
You can understand the impact of the invisible tax on the elderly by watching the decline of interest income from $50,000 invested in a five-year Treasury obligation. As recently as 2000, this would have yielded about 6.15 percent and an interest income of $3,075 a year. Now the same obligation is yielding 0.7 percent and an interest income of $350 a year. This is the lowest yield on this maturity of Treasury debt since the Federal Reserve started keeping an index of the yields in 1953.
But it’s more than a low interest rate. It’s an income decline of nearly 89 percent in just 12 years.
And after you account for inflation, those that put money into savings accounts today are actually losing money.
Of course most Americans have not saved up much money for retirement anyway. According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 46 percent of all American workers have less than $10,000 saved for retirement, and 29 percent of all American workers have less than $1,000 saved for retirement.
Overall, a study conducted by Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research discovered that American workers are $6.6 trillion short of what they need to retire comfortably.
So needless to say, we have a major problem.
Baby Boomers are just starting to retire and the Social Security system is still solvent at the moment, and yet the number of elderly Americans that are experiencing financial problems is already soaring.
For example, between 1991 and 2007 the number of Americans between the ages of 65 and 74 that filed for bankruptcy rose by a staggering 178 percent.
Also, at this point one out of every six elderly Americans is already living below the federal poverty line.
So how bad are things going to be when Social Security collapses?
That is frightening to think about.
In the short-term, millions upon millions of retired Americans that are living on fixed incomes are going to be absolutely crushed by the inflation that QE3 is going to cause.
Just like we saw with QE1 and QE2, a lot of the money from QE3 is going to end up in agricultural commodities and oil. That means that retirees (and all the rest of us) are going to end up paying more for food at the supermarket and gasoline at the pump.
But those on fixed incomes are not going to see a corresponding increase in their incomes. That means that their standards of living will go down.
Things are tough for retirees right now, but they are going to get a lot tougher.
Right now, there are somewhere around 40 million senior citizens. By 2050 that number is projected to increase to 89 million.
So how will our society cope with more than twice as many senior citizens?
Sadly, we will likely never get to find out.
The truth is that our system is almost certainly going to totally collapse long before then.
We are rapidly approaching a financial crisis unlike anything we have ever seen before in U.S. history, and the foolish policies of the Federal Reserve just keep making things even worse.
25 Bitter And Painful Facts About The Coming Baby Boomer Retirement Crisis That Will Blow Your Mind
A lot of younger Americans just assume that Social Security is enough to take care of the needs of elderly Americans. But that is just not the case.
Have you ever tried to live solely on a Social Security check?
It is not easy. The truth is that those checks are just not that large.
The following comes directly from the Social Security Administration….
Could you live on less than 300 dollars a week?
And keep in mind that the $1,177 monthly figure is just an average. Many receive a lot less than that.
In addition, Social Security benefits have been seriously squeezed by inflation in recent years. The cost of food and other basics has risen briskly and Social Security benefits have not.
Today, many elderly Americans have to make a choice between buying food, heating their homes or buying medicine that they need. They simply do not have enough money to do all of them.
It would have been nice if all of the Baby Boomers had been busy saving money for retirement all these years, but that just did not happen. In fact, the Baby Boomers as a group are trillions of dollars short of what they need for retirement.
So why doesn’t the U.S. government step in to help them out?
Well, the reality of the situation is that the U.S. government is flat broke. The federal government is now over 15 trillion dollars in debt. During the Obama administration so far, the U.S. government has accumulated more new debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.
Lawmakers are already looking at ways to make the Social Security program less costly. No, the federal government is not going to be riding to the rescue.
In fact, it will be a minor miracle if the Social Security program is able to survive until the end of this decade, and it will be a major miracle if the Social Security program is able to survive until 2030.
As for myself, I do not believe that I will ever see a single penny from Social Security, and many other working age Americans feel the same way.
Retirement is supposed to be a fun time, but sadly most Americans that are approaching retirement age are not going to have any “golden years” to look forward to.
Rather, millions of elderly Americans are going to find the years ahead absolutely agonizing as they struggle just to survive.
The following are 25 bitter and painful facts about the coming Baby Boomer retirement crisis that will blow your mind….
#1 According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 46 percent of all American workers have less than $10,000 saved for retirement, and 29 percent of all American workers have less than $1,000 saved for retirement.
#2 According to a recent poll conducted by Americans for Secure Retirement, 88 percent of all Americans are worried about “maintaining a comfortable standard of living in retirement”. Last year, that figure was at 73 percent.
#3 A study conducted by Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research has found that American workers are $6.6 trillion short of what they need to retire comfortably.
#4 Today, one out of every six elderly Americans lives below the federal poverty line.
#5 On January 1st, 2011 the very first Baby Boomers started to retire. For almost the next 20 years, more than 10,000 Baby Boomers will be retiring every single day.
#6 At the moment, only about 13 percent of all Americans are 65 years of age or older. By 2030, that number will soar to 18 percent.
#7 Right now, there are somewhere around 40 million senior citizens. By 2050 that number is projected to increase to 89 million.
#8 Back in 1991, half of all American workers planned to retire before they reached the age of 65. Today, that number has declined to 23 percent.
#9 According to one recent survey, 74 percent of American workers expect to continue working once they are “retired”.
#10 According to a recent AARP survey of Baby Boomers, 40 percent of them plan to work “until they drop”.
#11 A poll conducted by CESI Debt Solutions found that 56 percent of American retirees still had outstanding debts when they retired.
#12 A study by a law professor at the University of Michigan found that Americans that are 55 years of age or older now account for 20 percent of all bankruptcies in the United States. Back in 2001, they only accounted for 12 percent of all bankruptcies.
#13 Between 1991 and 2007 the number of Americans between the ages of 65 and 74 that filed for bankruptcy rose by a staggering 178 percent.
#14 What is causing most of these bankruptcies among the elderly? The number one cause is medical bills. According to a report published in The American Journal of Medicine, medical bills are a major factor in more than 60 percent of the personal bankruptcies in the United States. Of those bankruptcies that were caused by medical bills, approximately 75 percent of them involved individuals that actually did have health insurance.
#15 Public retirement funds all over the United States are woefully underfunded. For example, it has been reported that the $33.7 billion Illinois Teachers Retirement System is 61% underfunded and is on the verge of complete collapse.
#16 Most U.S. states have huge pension obligations which threaten to bankrupt them. For example, 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. When you break that down, it comes to $22,000 for every single working adult in the state of California.
#17 Robert Novy-Marx of the University of Chicago and Joshua D. Rauh of Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management have calculated the combined pension liability for all 50 U.S. states. What they found was that the 50 states are collectively facing $5.17 trillion in pension obligations, but they only have $1.94 trillion set aside in state pension funds. That is a difference of 3.2 trillion dollars. So where in the world is all of that extra money going to come from?
#18 According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Social Security system paid out more in benefits than it received in payroll taxes in 2010. That was not supposed to happen until at least 2016. Sadly, in the years ahead these “Social Security deficits” are scheduled to become absolutely nightmarish as hordes of Baby Boomers retire.
#19 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.
#20 The U.S. government now says that the Medicare trust fund will run out five years faster than they were projecting just last year.
#21 The total cost of just three federal government programs – the Department of Defense, Social Security and Medicare – exceeded the total amount of taxes brought in during fiscal 2010 by 10 billion dollars. In the years ahead expenses related to Social Security and Medicare are projected to skyrocket dramatically.
#22 The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation is the agency of the federal government that pays monthly retirement benefits to hundreds of thousands of retirees that were covered under defined benefit pension plans that failed. The retirement crisis has barely even begun and the PBGC is already dead broke. The PBGC says that it ran a deficit of $26 billion during the fiscal year that just ended and that it will probably need a huge bailout from the federal government.
#23 According to a survey by careerbuilder.com, 36 percent of all Americans say that they don’t contribute anything at all to retirement savings.
#24 More than 30 percent of all investors in the United States that are currently in their sixties have more than 80 percent of their 401k plans invested in equities. So what is going to happen to them if the stock market crashes?
#25 A survey taken earlier this year found that 20 percent of all U.S. workers admitted that they had postponed their planned retirement age at least once during the last 12 months. Back in 2008, that number was only at 14 percent.
Our politicians should have addressed the retirement crisis decades ago before we got to the point of being in debt up to our eyeballs.
It is being projected that the U.S. national debt will hit 344% of GDP by the year 2050, and the Congressional Budget Office says that U.S. government debt held by the public will reach a staggering 716% of GDP by the year 2080.
Obviously those figures will never be reached because our financial system would totally collapse long before then.
So what do we do?
We have tens of millions of elderly Americans that are completely and totally dependent on Social Security and Medicare, but those programs also threaten to bankrupt us as a nation.
Anyone that believes that there is a “quick fix” to these issues is being naive.
The “supercommittee” was supposed to address this problem, but they failed so spectacularly that they have become a national joke.
Sadly, most of our politicians just keep kicking the can down the road. They hope that somehow things will just magically “work out”.
Well, the truth is that things are not going to “work out”. The poverty level among the elderly is going to continue to increase. Pension plans all over this nation are going to continue to fail in staggering numbers. Social Security and Medicare are going to bleed more red ink with each passing year.
Something should have been done about this problem a long, long time ago.
But it wasn’t.
This crisis was ignored, dealing with it was put off time after time and all the doomsayers were laughed at.
Now the crisis is here, and we are all going to pay the price.