Robbing the poor pensioners

The orchestrated scam on the property market resulting with the failure of the big bankls in the US last year (also known as the "crisis", "the market crash" and so forth) had wiped out $5,400 billion (€3,590 billion) off the value of the pension systems of the industrialized world. This was reported (without much fanfare) by the OECD few weeks ago.

Now, can you imagine how big pile of money in bills of $5 you would build to make $ 5,400,000,000,000 in cash?

Why bills of $5 and not larger notes, say of $20?

Because a $5 bill buys a retired person bread, milk, pasta and apples, all what is needed for a day.

Maybe that would be a small mountain-size of cash. Maybe not.

But for 1,000,000,000 people the total (?) loss IS about 1100 days (three full years) less life .

In short: a bunch of smart asses fuck-up the system out of greed and one billion people need to perish three years earlier than God allowed them to live.

If you think a little you will probably ask yourselves where the hell was that money placed to perish so quickly in such a short time? If it was in state obligations, US Treasury bills - it would have been safe. Yeah, but it was not.

The managers of the wast majority of pension funds do NOT put the cash formed of monthly contributions of millions of working people in US *or RM) Treasury bills but in equities, stock, shares traded on the stock exchanges of the world.

Why?

Because stock, shares are bigger fun and MAY produce higher return than the fixed rate of return guaranteed by the state, whether USA, China, Macedonia or another. The average pension fund manager actually plays with the savings and lives of millions of people. When those managers goof it on the stock exchange or place enormous sums of money (for retirement benefits of unsuspecting people) then those contributors are duped, stolen, robbed of years and years of savings for some latter, distant day security.

This huge loss of $5,400 billion is irretrievable.

Gone. Perished.

ONLY IN COUNTRIES where the pension funds DO NOT put all of their liquid assets in stock (Norway, Turkey, Switzerland, South Korea and Germany) the pension fund did not lose money but grew. In these countries the pension funds invest only between 10% and a maximum of 20% in shares, in equities. I do not believe that the pension funds managers in either Turkey, South Korea or Switzerland are angels guided by heavenly hand and high morals. Methinks that it is a combination of rules, laws, oversight, control and culture that saved those pension funds from the awesome loss suffered by the other pension funds.