Category Archives: Pensions

Ticking retirement timebomb? Unfunded state pension liabilities grow to $8.28 trillion, by The Center Square

Posted on June 10, 2022 | Leave a comment

Is default the only way out. Probably. From The Center Square at justthenews.com:

Unfunded state pension liabilities have climbed to $8.28 trillion, or nearly $25,000 for every person in the United States, according to a new report from the American Legislative Exchange Council.

The American Legislative Exchange Council released the latest edition of its report on pensions in all 50 states Thursday. The report, “Unaccountable and Unaffordable 2021,” shows just a handful of states with outsize pension liabilities account for a large share of overall pension debt in the U.S.

The report looked at 290 state-administered government pension plans and their assets and liabilities from fiscal year 2012 to fiscal year 2020. An example of state-administered government pension plans in Illinois would cover state employees, teachers, university workers, judges and lawmakers.

The states with the most unfunded liabilities were California ($1.53 trillion), Illinois ($533.72 billion), Texas ($529.70 billion), New York ($508.70 billion) and Ohio ($429.53 billion). These five states alone account for more than $3.5 trillion in unfunded liabilities, or about 43% of all unfunded liabilities in the U.S.

The bottom 10 states make up $4.9 trillion, or 59.36% of all unfunded liabilities, according to the ALEC report. On a per capita basis, the bottom five state were Alaska ($42,829), Illinois ($41,656.79), Connecticut ($40,427.58), Hawaii ($39,939.43), New Jersey ($39,849.02) and California ($38,713.16).

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Posted in Debt, Economics, Economy, Governments, Money, Pensions, Politics, Propaganda, Taxes

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Insecurity Made Social, by Eric Peters

Posted on May 4, 2022 | Leave a comment

Social Security is history’s biggest Ponzi scheme. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

The paradox of what is styled “Social Security” is that it renders the victim insecure. How else to describe a person who has been serially mulcted for all of his working life such that his daily bread and the roof over his head are dependent upon a miserly dole?

Italicized to lay bare the unpleasant truth of the thing.

Well, one of them.

People are told by the government which forcibly compels them to give up 15 percent of every dollar they earn that they are contributing to Social Security. They are not given the choice to not “contribute.”

Government excels at definitional perversion. It uses a word to mean its opposite – in order to front-load any discussion of the subject with false premises, so as to sidetrack the debate over it into legalisms and irrelevances. The recent business regarding the possibility that the case law, Roe V. Wade may be overturned provides a fine example. The Supreme Court is not dealing with the question at issue. Instead, it is parsing legalisms having to do with the degree of federal oversight of over what is styled a woman’s “right to choose.”

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Posted in Collapse, Crime, Debt, Economics, Economy, Government, Investing, Pensions

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The Disney Company Quits Russia – And Not a Moment Too Soon, by Robert Bridge

Posted on April 8, 2022 | Leave a comment

It’s hard to see much symbiosis between a Russia returning to its Russian Orthodox roots and Disney, increasingly devoted to the brand of religion known as wokeism. From Robert Bridge at strategic-culture.org:

Russia now finds itself at a moment where it can forever shut the door to a rudderless company that finds itself promoting ideas that are totally at odds with Russian values and beliefs.

Although the news may seem a bit trivial, with war and economic chaos flaring in the background of the global stage, Disney leaving Russia will have the same mental and physical benefits as McDonald’s and Pornhub saying their goodbyes to Europe’s largest consumer market.

One of the results of Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine has been a number of Western companies abandoning Russia, some temporarily, some for good. This odious display of corporate virtue-signaling, conspicuously absent during the U.S.-led wars in Iraq, Libya and Syria, by the way, represents a setback not only for Russia, but the global economy. However, there is at least one silver lining to the ‘walk-out’ that should be celebrated, and that is how Russians will get a reprieve, maybe a permanent one, from the degenerate brain candy of Western entertainment, notably from the Disney Corporation. Disney’s preponderant footprint in Russia includes local productions and television channels, the licensing of content and consumer products, cruises, magazine and tours, among other business.

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Posted in Business, Collapse, Government, History, Morality, Pensions, Politics, Religion

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When Do Governments Steal – Ahem – NATIONALIZE – Retirement Accounts? By Aden Tate

Posted on April 8, 2022 | Leave a comment

Don’t think it can’t happen here. From Aden Tate at theorganicprepper.com:

As the American debt reaches record levels on a daily basis, currently being in the trillions of dollars and literally impossible for America to ever pay off, there is a very juicy nest egg that politicians are going to begin to eye at some point: retirement accounts.

retirement accounts

By nationalizing retirement accounts, a sudden influx of cash would appear in DC’s coffers, helping to make the country look better on paper and potentially last just a little bit longer.

You may think that the nationalization of retirement accounts would never happen here in America, but there have been a lot of things that have happened over the last few years that we never believed could happen on American soil.

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Posted in Crime, Debt, Economy, Government, Investing, Morality, Pensions, Politics, Propaganda

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Social Security Steams Closer to Crisis, by Brian McGlinchey

Posted on November 26, 2021 | 1 comment

Don’t look now, but Social Security is rapidly going broke. It’s going to take big tax hikes and benefit cuts to make it fiscally healthy. Don’t worry though, most of that will fall on posterity. From Brian McGlinchy at starkrealities.substack.com:

As Democrats push new entitlement programs, the biggest one is set to run aground

At a time when President Biden and congressional Democrats are pushing to expand the breadth of entitlements to include free preschool and subsidized child care, little attention is given to the fact that the country’s biggest existing entitlement program—Social Security—is a financial wreck.

The program’s payouts have exceeded revenue since 2010, but the recent past is nowhere near as grim as the future. According to the latest annual report by Social Security’s trustees, the gap between promised benefits and future payroll tax revenue has reached a staggering $59.8 trillion.

That gap is $6.8 trillion larger than it was just one year earlier. The biggest driver of that move wasn’t Covid-19, but rather a lowering of expected fertility over the coming decades.

That trend has already been steadily undermining the program. In 1960, for every Social Security beneficiary there were 5.1 workers adding payroll taxes to the system. That ratio has shrunk to 2.7 and is expected to reach 2.2 by 2036.

The Social Security trust fund is projected to run out in 2033. Absent other action, that would trigger a 20% cut for everyone receiving benefits at that time.

While 2033 is just 12 years from now, it’s hard to predict when an appropriate sense of crisis will actually take hold in Washington. We can, however, speculate on what measures the inevitable reckoning with the program’s insolvency could include.

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Pritzker Administration sloughs off Illinois pension liabilities passing $500 billion mark, dissembles on pension crisis again, by Mark Glennon

Posted on November 22, 2021 | 2 comments

The taxpayers of Illinois are buried under the pensions that have been granted to public employees. From Mark Glennon at wirepoints.org:

There’s a lesson here not only about Illinois pensions but about how easily the press will let Gov. J.B. Pritzker thumb his nose at a crisis.

We reported Wednesday that the total unfunded liability for Illinois state and local pensions passed the $500 billion mark. That includes pensioner healthcare liabilities, which are constitutionally guarantied just like pensions. It is based on numbers from Moody’s Investor Services which uses assumptions comparable to those used in the private sector and are less optimistic than those the state uses. Read Wirepoints Special Report: Illinois pension shortfall surpasses $500 billion, average debt burden now $110,000 per household

Greg Hinz at Crain’s asked Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office for a response.

“Pritzker’s office is pushing back on the notion that he’s done too little,” wrote Hinz. “Steps such as discounted buyouts of some pensions have ‘begun to bend the curve,’ with the percentage of total spending that goes to pension now flattening, a spokeswoman says in an email.”

Nonsense. Pritzker has done nothing significant whatsoever to fix pensions and it is particularly dishonest to cite pension buyouts as an example of progress.

Pritzker has long been boasting about pension buyouts but forever refuses to provide any support or analysis showing that buyouts would have any meaningful effect. We and others have written about it repeatedly.

  • In 2019 he told The Economic Club of Chicago that some study says buyouts will save “billions and billions,” perhaps $25 billion. But he has never produced that study or anything else to support the claim, and the state’s bond documents said something very different in the debt offering made just prior to that claim. Those documents said just 818 workers and retirees who are eligible for either of the state’s buyout programs had applied for one. That’s less than 2.3%, not 20% as Pritzker told the Economic Club. The documents further said, “The State is unable to quantify the amount or timing of any [reduction in pension liabilities] at this time.” In other words, Pritzker brags about savings to the public but the state says something different when the penalty would be securities fraud.

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Posted in Debt, Government, Law, Pensions, Taxes

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Status of Social Security and the Trust Fund, Fiscal 2021: Beware of Vicious Dog, by Wolf Richter

Posted on November 12, 2021 | Leave a comment

The Social Security Trust Fund is not in good shape, and if inflation picks up from where it is, it will eviscerate both the fund but the expectations of millions of its beneficiaries. From Wolf Richter at wolfstreet.com:

Biggest COLA since 1982 already eaten up by inflation.

The Social Security Trust Fund – the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Trust Fund – closed the fiscal year 2021 at the end of September with a balance of $2.76 trillion, down by 2.0% from a year earlier ($2.81 trillion), according to figures released by the Social Security Administration. After large increases in the prior decade, this was the second annual decline of the Trust Fund since 1990; the first occurred in 2018 (-0.8%).

The Disability Insurance Trust Fund is by law a separate entity from the OASI Trust Fund, and is not part of this discussion here.

The OASI Trust Fund invests exclusively in Treasury securities. At the end of the fiscal year, it held $2.73 trillion in interest-bearing long-term special issue Treasury securities and $22 billion in a short-term cash management security, called “certificates of indebtedness.” These securities are not traded, and so their value doesn’t change from hour to hour, and they don’t need to be marked to market because the Trust Fund purchases them at face value, and the US Treasury redeems them at face value.

By investing on autopilot in Treasury securities that are not exposed to the market, the Trust Fund follows an ultra-low-risk strategy and operates with ultra-low administrative expenses, amounting to just 0.14% of the assets in the fund.

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The Insecurity of Social Security, by Lance Roberts

Posted on September 12, 2021 | Leave a comment

If you’re counting on Social Security to fund a long retirement, don’t. From Lance Roberts at realinvestmentadvice.com:

The latest annual report from the Social Security Trustees showed the insecurity of social security.

According to the July 2021 snapshot from the Social Security Administration, nearly 70-million people receive a monthly benefit check, of which 51.3 million are over the age of 65.

Social Security Insecurity, #MacroView: The Insecurity Of Social Security

Social Security provides the majority of income to most elderly Americans. The system provides at least 50 percent of incomes for about half of seniors. For roughly 1 in 4 seniors, it provides at least 90 percent of total incomes. But, that dependency ratio is directly tied to the financial insolvency of the vast majority of Americans. According to a CNBC report:

“Morning Consult found that nearly 18% of adults with an annual income of $50,000 or less have no savings, while some 34% have enough to cover just three months of expenses. Another 11% would deplete savings within six months. Only 10% of that income group has more than a year’s worth of cash.

Higher-income households are only somewhat better prepared, the survey found. Among those with annual incomes of $50,000 to $100,000, about 18% said they have between three months and six months of savings. About 25% said their cash would last less than three months, and 6% had set aside nothing at all. None of those questioned in that income group had more than a year’s worth of savings.”

Social Security Insecurity, #MacroView: The Insecurity Of Social Security

Such is a huge problem that will impact boomers in retirement.

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185 Pensions Got Their $86 Billion Piece of the COVID-19 Rescue “Pie”, from Birch Gold

Posted on March 15, 2021 | Leave a comment

Incompetence is the sure ticket for getting money from the Biden government. From birchgold.com:

185 Pensions Got Their $86 Billion Piece of the COVID-19 Rescue Pie

Where pension debt is a looming danger to taxpayers, via Texas Public Policy Foundation

Both private and public pensions have been having major funding issues and struggling to get a good ROI for a number of years.

So it’s no surprise that any sort of economic relief package presented to Congress would include funds for pensions. Especially since a “bailout” culture seems to have taken root in America.

The recent $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus bill approved by the House is no exception to this “bailout culture.”

The New York Times reported that it contains $86 billion for struggling pensions:

The $86 billion is a taxpayer bailout for about 185 union pension plans that are so close to collapse that without the rescue, more than a million retired truck drivers, retail clerks, builders and others could be forced to forgo retirement income.

The article continued: “The trend predated the pandemic and is a result of fading unions, serial bankruptcies and the misplaced hope that investment income would foot most of the bill so that employers and workers wouldn’t have to.”

Leaving aside the fact that “hope” is shaky ground to base any economic decision on, this appears as another signal that pensions are going the way of the dodo bird.

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Consequences – They are unavoidable, by Bill Blain

Posted on March 12, 2021 | Leave a comment

Artificially suppressed interest rates and low birth rates have their consequences. From Bill Blain at morningporridge.com:

“We may choose our paths, but we can’t choose the consequences that come with them.”

This morning: Consequences are unavoidable. Pension savers are crushed by interest rate repression and the changing demographics of Covid, while the deluge of debt fuelled by low rates does nothing for economic sustainability.

One of the things any investor must understand is that everything has consequences. There are always consequences. They are unavoidable. 13 years of monetary experimentation by central banks has profound consequences. For everybody.

A few days ago my colleague, Mike Hollings, CIO of Shard, and I put together a vlog on shifting market conditions. I’ve known Mike for decades, and we both agree it’s the consequences of the last 13 years of monetary distortion (since the beginning of the Global Financial Crisis that began in 2007) that present the greatest long-term challenges for markets. (You should be able to see some highlights of our chat in the latest Shard Lite-Bite video later today.)

One of the issues we covered was the effect of repressed interest rates on savings – and how challenging these will be to the expectations of current pension plans. Sure enough, bang on time, there are two stories in the market this morning that throw our concerns into stark reality.

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Posted in Banking, Business, Collapse, Debt, demographics, Investing, Pensions

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