25 Bitter And Painful Facts About The Coming Baby Boomer Retirement Crisis That Will Blow Your Mind

For decades we were warned that when the Baby Boomers started to retire that this country would be facing a retirement crisis of unprecedented magnitude. Well, that day has arrived ladies and gentlemen. Back on January 1st, the Baby Boomers began to retire and more than 10,000 of them will be retiring every single day for years to come. Most of them have not saved up nearly enough money for retirement. At the same time, private sector pension plans are failing all over the place, hundreds of state and local government pension plans from coast to coast are woefully underfunded, and the Social Security system is on the road to complete and total disaster. A massive wave of humanity is hitting retirement age at a moment in history when the U.S. economy is coming apart at the seams. We do not have the resources to keep the promises that we made to the Baby Boomers, and most of them have not made adequate preparations for retirement. What we have is a gigantic mess on our hands, and millions of Baby Boomers are going to find retirement to be very bitter and very painful.

Black Friday Violence Worse Than Ever As American Consumers Fight Over Deals Like Crazed Animals

We all knew that this was coming, didn't we? Each year Black Friday violence just seems to get worse and worse. What does it say about American consumers when they are willing to fight like crazed animals just to save a few bucks on cheap plastic crap made in China? Not that retailers are innocent in any of this. It certainly seems as though many of them purposely create wild situations on Black Friday where customers will rush like crazy people into their stores and nearly riot as they fight over discounted merchandise. The more Black Friday madness there is, the more of an "event" it becomes, and the higher the profits of the retailers go. This year there was more Black Friday hype than ever and there was also more Black Friday violence than ever. It is being projected that this year a record-setting 152 million Americans will go shopping between Thanksgiving and Sunday night. That may be good news for the big corporate retailers, but the shocking lack of character being displayed by American consumers all over the country this weekend is very bad news for the future of this nation.

Trouble. Economic Collapse Blog

The global economy is heading for a massive amount of trouble in the months ahead. Right now we are seeing the beginning of a credit crunch that is shaping up to be very reminiscent of what we saw back in 2008. Investors and big corporations are pulling huge amounts of money out of European banks and nobody wants to lend to those banks right now. We could potentially see dozens of "Lehman Brothers moments" in Europe in 2012. Meanwhile, bond yields on sovereign debt are jumping through the roof all over Europe. That means that European nations that are already drowning in debt are going to find it much more expensive to continue funding that debt. It would be a huge understatement to say that there is "financial chaos" in Europe right now. The European financial system is in so much trouble that it is hard to describe. The instant that they stop receiving bailout money, Greece is going to default. Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Spain and quite a few other European nations are also on the verge of massive financial problems. When the financial dominoes start to fall, the U.S. financial system is going to be dramatically affected as well, because U.S. banks have a huge amount of exposure to European debt. The other day, I noted that investor Jim Rogers is saying that the coming global financial collapse "is going to be worse" than 2008. Sadly, it looks like he is right on the money. We are in a lot of trouble my friends, and things are going to get really, really ugly.

Whose Fuse Is Shorter?. by Peter Schiff

With fiscal time bombs ticking in both Europe and the United States, the pertinent question for now seems to be which will explode first. For much of the past few months it looked as if Europe was set to blow. But Angela Merkel's refusal to support a Federal Reserve style bailout of European sovereigns and her recent statement the she had no Hank Paulson style fiscal bazooka in her handbag, has lowered the heat. In contrast, the utter failure of the Congressional Super Committee in the United States to come up with any shred of success in addressing America's fiscal problems has sparked a renewed realization that America's fuse is dangerously short.

Doug Casey on Fresh Starts. Interviewed by Louis James

L: Doug, we've had a lot of requests from younger readers asking for advice on how they should tackle the world, starting out amidst a crisis. We've also had questions from older readers asking what you might do differently if you were 21 again – or if you were suddenly unemployed and had to start from scratch. What do you think? Can you stroke your long, white beard and give us some practical guru wisdom for today's world?
Doug: I keep telling people I have no crystal ball, but they don't listen. Nobody has a crystal ball. But, perhaps paradoxically, I also keep giving people advice because they ask; and like anyone, I'd like to help – but those people rarely listen either.
Giving advice is temporarily gratifying to the giver, because it makes him feel like he knows something – for that moment. But it's ultimately frustrating because few receivers ever use advice. People generally have to make their own mistakes. I believe it was Stalin who said that even those few people who learn from their own mistakes weren't all that smart; he preferred to learn from other people's mistakes… not that Stalin should be considered a generally sound source of advice. It's odd, actually – one of history's great sociopaths dispensing words of wisdom…

No Lehman on the Aegean

By Desmond Lachman

Can we be spared a Lehman-style crisis when Greece’s hard default occurs?

After two years of denial about the European periphery’s solvency problem, European policy makers are finally, albeit grudgingly, facing up to reality. Indeed, they are now privately recognizing that Greece is very likely to default by year-end. And they have also come to the conclusion that such an eventuality makes it imperative both that an effective firewall be erected around Spain and Italy and that Europe’s banks need to be recapitalized.

Merkel’s Moment

By Desmond Lachman

If past is prologue to the future, there is little reason to believe that Merkel will allow the ECB to provide unlimited support to the periphery.

As Europe’s sovereign debt crisis now envelopes Italy, Spain, and even France, one has to pity Angela Merkel, the doughty German chancellor. She now finds herself helplessly caught between two irreconcilable forces.

By Lee E. Ohanian

There is much less competition in the public sector than the private sector and that has made all the difference.

Since the Great Recession began in 2008, there has been a growing criticism of public sector unions, reflecting taxpayer concerns about union compensation and unfunded pension liabilities. These concerns have led to proposals to change public sector union policy in very significant ways. Earlier this month, voters in Ohio defeated by a wide margin a law that would have restricted union powers, although polls showed broad support for portions of the law that would have reduced union benefits. In Wisconsin, a state with a long-standing pro-union stance, Governor Scott Walker advanced policy in February that would cut pay and substantially curtail collective bargaining rights of many public sector union workers. In Florida, State Senator John Thrasher introduced legislation that would prevent governments from collecting union dues from union worker state paychecks. And it is not just Ohio, Wisconsin, and Florida that are attempting to change the landscape of public unions. Cash-strapped governments in many states are considering ways to reduce the costs associated with public unions.

President avoids political hot potato

By Dave Boyer

** FILE ** In this Nov. 22, 2011 file photo, President Barack Obama gestures while speaking at Central High School in Manchester, N.H. The failure of Congress’ supercommittee adds a new dimension to the 2012 political contests by drawing political battle lines around broad tax increases and massive spending cuts that are now scheduled to begin automatically in 2013. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)

President Obama has distanced himself from the congressional supercommittee — politically and geographically — in a strategy aimed at avoiding political risk rather than putting his leadership on the line for a long-shot deal, analysts say.

Principle should trump any effort to ‘just get along’

By Thomas N. Tripp

Illustration: Bipartisan by Linas Garsys for The Washington Times

While some in Washington try to solve and others obstruct fixing our fiscal mess, we hear the liberal lament: “Our political system is broken because of partisanship.” This is untrue, even absurd. This argument tries to pit politics against principle. Democrats are using their own convoluted brand of partisanship, a cynical, feel-good version of “Can’t we all just get along?” after they already have stacked the deck against reform. They assert there is something wrong with the political system, rather than with their policies, when they don’t get their way. The political claim prevents discussion of the real problem the nation faces: insolvency. The liberal hypocrisy finally has been brought to trial.

No budget deal just might be a good deal for U.S. economy. Patrice Hill

The reaction to the supercommittee’s epic failure this week to address the spiraling debt has been surprisingly muted on Wall Street and Main Street, in part because astute observers there have concluded that Congress may accomplish more by doing nothing when it comes to the deficit.
If partisan gridlock prevails in the next year or so, as seems likely in a presidential election year, about $7 trillion in tax cuts and spending programs will expire under current law — enough to eradicate the deficit problem by 2014 — well ahead of the most ambitious plans offered in Congress.

Armed illegals stalked Border Patrol. Jerry Seper

Five illegal immigrants armed with at least two AK-47 semi-automatic assault rifles were hunting for U.S. Border Patrol agents near a desert watering hole known as Mesquite Seep just north of the Arizona-Mexico border when a firefight erupted and one U.S. agent was killed, records show.
A now-sealed federal grand jury indictment in the death of Border Patrol agent Brian A. Terry says the Mexican nationals were “patrolling” the rugged desert area of Peck Canyon at about 11:15 p.m. on Dec. 14 with the intent to “intentionally and forcibly assault” Border Patrol agents.

American tax law

Congress creates a bureaucratic nightmare for fund managers

Paperboarding

CATCHING tax cheats is well and good in theory. Achieving that feat in practice is another matter. As fund managers are finding, the latest effort from the American authorities to root out those of their citizens who have been hiding their assets overseas is creating a bureaucratic nightmare around the world.

The euro

The crisis in the euro area is turning into a panic and dragging the zone into recession. The risk that the currency disintegrates within weeks is alarmingly high

FIRST Greece; then Ireland and Portugal; then Italy and Spain. Month by month, the crisis in the euro area has crept from the vulnerable periphery of the currency zone towards its core, helped by denial, misdiagnosis and procrastination by the euro-zone’s policymakers. Recently Belgian and French government bonds have been in the financial markets’ bad books. Investors are even sniffy about German bonds: an auction of ten-year Bunds on November 23rd shifted only €3.6 billion-worth ($4.8 billion) of the €6 billion-worth on offer.

Charlemagne

Denial and delusion in Brussels, as the single currency founders

THE designers of the good ship euro wanted to create the greatest liner of the age. But as everybody now knows, it was fit only for fair-weather sailing, with an anarchic crew and no lifeboat. Its rules of economic seamanship were rudimentary, and were broken anyway. When it struck a reef two years ago, the water flooded one compartment after another.

The euro zone

Unless Germany and the ECB move quickly, the single currency’s collapse is looming

EVEN as the euro zone hurtles towards a crash, most people are assuming that, in the end, European leaders will do whatever it takes to save the single currency. That is because the consequences of the euro’s destruction are so catastrophic that no sensible policymaker could stand by and let it happen.

Lexington

It was never supposed to fall on the Defence Department itself

IN THE summer of 2010 Admiral Mike Mullen, then still chairman of America’s joint chiefs of staff, said that the biggest security threat facing the nation was the national debt. The proposition that military strength depends in the long run on economic health is hardly controversial. But the admiral cannot have foreseen the astonishing sequence of budget negotiations that have paralysed Congress this past year. In the latest twist this week, Democrats and Republicans on Congress’s so-called “supercommittee” failed to agree on a plan to reduce the budget deficit, thereby exposing the defence budget to the prospect of a decade’s worth of deep spending cuts.

U.S. Should Learn from Europe's Welfare State Mistakes. by Daniel J. Mitchell

Our long-run outlook is grim, but at least we still have time to reform the entitlement programs and save America from Greek-style fiscal collapse.

The conventional wisdom among economists is that a nation gets in deep trouble when government debt reaches 90 percent of GDP. That's generally true, but it would be much more accurate to say that a nation gets in deep trouble when debt approaches 90 percent of GDP and the fiscal outlook shows even more red ink.

Saving Democracy in the Classroom by Nat Hentoff

For this nation to survive as a self-governing republic, we need to motivate our public-school students to become active, knowledgeable, critical-thinking citizens.

Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York (a renowned education foundation), frames the challenge: "Today's students must experience, debate, understand and argue about what it means to be a citizen. There is no better place to transmit the ideas — and the challenges — inherent in our democracy.
Showing what it takes for this to happen in schools is Diana Hess, a professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The Real "1 Percent" by Michael D. Tanner

So just who are those top 1 percent of Americans that we're all supposed to hate?

If you listen to President Obama, the protesters at Occupy Wall Street, and much of the media, it's obvious. They're either "trust-fund babies" who inherited their money, or greedy bankers and hedge-fund managers. Certainly, they haven't worked especially hard for their money. While the recession has thrown millions of Americans out of work, they've been getting even richer. Worse, they don't even pay their fair share in taxes: Millionaires and billionaires are paying a lower tax rate than their secretaries.

How Capitalism Saved the Pilgrims

by Daniel Griswold
When I was growing up, my father would occasionally tell me the story around this time of year of how private property rights saved the Pilgrims from starvation.
When the Pilgrims first arrived in 1620, as my father told the story, they tried to live communally according to the spirit of the Mayflower Compact. What crops they grew were put in a common storehouse and then apportioned according to each family’s need. The small colony struggled to survive for two or three years until its leaders declared that every family henceforth would be responsible for growing its own food. The new system proved much superior at putting food on the table.

Things to Be Thankful For

by David Boaz
Not long ago a journalist asked me what freedoms we take for granted in America. Now, I spend most of my time sounding the alarm about the freedoms we’re losing. But this was a good opportunity to step back and consider how America is different from much of world history — and why immigrants still flock here.
If we ask how life in the United States is different from life in most of the history of the world — and still different from much of the world — a few key elements come to mind.

It's Time to Gut, Not Cut, the Federal Government. by Doug Bandow

Washington's vaunted debt reduction supercommittee has failed. The dozen members were unable to agree on a package of deficit reduction measures which would only have slowed the fast rising tide of federal red ink. It will probably take the Second Coming before legislators voluntarily halt the wild taxpayer-paid party on the Potomac.

Committees and commissions aren't necessary to diagnose America's budget problem. Uncle Sam is spending far more than he takes in. Outlays always seem to increase — and always faster than the rate of inflation — no matter who is in power.
Republicans as well as Democrats spend more money on most everything. The only time that isn't the case is when government is divided and different parties run different ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. One party control in Washington tends to open the fiscal spigots to the maximum.

Freedom: The New and Future Experiment

By Joel Bowman

Buenos Aires, Argentina – Before I get started… Anybody here know what glossophobia means? The word derives from the Greek glossa, meaning tongue, and phobos, meaning fear or dread. Glossophobia, also known as speech anxiety, is a fear of public speaking.
And I suffer from it terribly.
Glossophobia aside, I’m going to press on today anyway because what I want to talk to you about is very important. Maybe more so now than ever.
The title of my speech is “Freedom: The New and Future Experiment.”
This topic is particularly timely right now because, as you well know, a revolution of sorts is today under way in a place that used to be comfortable calling itself, proudly and with a straight face, “The Land of the Free, Home of the Brave.” Try asking any thinking individual who happened to be born within the United States borders today to claim that title without arousing a disquieting feeling of tragic irony. You might hear the words, but you’ll notice they are delivered with an empty conviction, with some embarrassment, a shame, almost, for remembering what was lost.
But before addressing the New and Future Experiment, let’s take a look at the Old and Moribund Experiment: Statism.

The Weakest Link: Terrifying Economic Conditions in the US and Europe

By Addison Wiggin

11/23/11 Baltimore, Maryland – US economic conditions are “terrifying,” Mohamed El-Erian said yesterday. El-Erian, as you may know, is Bill Gross’ right-hand man at Pimco, the world’s largest bond fund. He gives the US a 50/50 chance at a renewed recession.
“What’s most terrifying?” El-Erian asked rhetorically in a Bloomberg TV interview. “We are having this discussion about the risk of recession at a time when unemployment is already too high, at a time when a quarter of homeowners are underwater on their mortgages, at a time then the fiscal deficit is at 9% and at a time when interest rates are at zero.
“The big concern is the US getting tipped over by Europe. Things in Europe are getting worse, not better.”
Indeed, they are. A plan to bail out the French-Belgian banking mongrel known as Dexia is falling apart, according to a Belgian newspaper.

Friday, November 25, 2011