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Under Millard's strategy, the pension agency was directed to invest 55 percent of its funds in stocks and real estate. That included 20 percent in US stocks, 19 percent in foreign stocks, 6 percent in what the agency's records term "emerging market" stocks, 5 percent in private real estate and 5 percent in private equity firms.
What I warned of was the potential loss of your private pensions a few months back, if you remember.
Here's the formula for your impending doom, if you forgot:
1.
The S&P 500 goes to 300 as the "bailouts" and "handouts" collapse the economy.
2.
The PGGC's equity investments are worth 20 cents on the dollar, the private equity and REITs are zeros. This puts the fund 40% underwater across-the-board.
3.
It is unable to pay and goes to Congress.
4.
Congress can't fund additional borrowing because the bond market has dislocated.
5.
You get 10 cents on the dollar for your supposedly 'guaranteed' pension.
Oh, and your Social Security and Medicare are cut by half (or more) too due to #4 at the same time.
Congratulations America, this is the price of remaining asleep while the robber barons fleece the Treasury.
Still think you ought to watch American Idol eh?
I give this two, maybe three years before it plays out.
SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Mercy James thought she had lost her rental property here to foreclosure. A date for a sheriff’s sale had been set, and notices about the foreclosure process were piling up in her mailbox.
Ms. James had the tenants move out, and soon her white house at the corner of Thomas and Maple Streets fell into the hands of looters and vandals, and then, into disrepair. Dejected and broke, Ms. James said she salvaged but a lesson from her loss.
So imagine her surprise when the City of South Bend contacted her recently, demanding that she resume maintenance on the property. The sheriff’s sale had been canceled at the last minute, leaving the property title — and a world of trouble — in her name.
“I thought, ‘What kind of game is this?’ ” Ms. James, 41, said while picking at trash at the house, now so worthless the city plans to demolish it — another bill for which she will be liable.
City officials and housing advocates here and in cities as varied as Buffalo, Kansas City, Mo., and Jacksonville, Fla., say they are seeing an unsettling development: Banks are quietly declining to take possession of properties at the end of the foreclosure process, most often because the cost of the ordeal — from legal fees to maintenance — exceeds the diminishing value of the real estate.
The so-called bank walkaways rarely mean relief for the property owners, caught unaware months after the fact, and often mean additional financial burdens and bureaucratic headaches. Technically, they still owe on the mortgage, but as a practicality, rarely would a mortgage holder receive any more payments on the loan. The way mortgages are bundled and resold, it can be enormously time-consuming just trying to determine what company holds the loan on a property thought to be in foreclosure.
In Ms. James’s case, the company that was most recently servicing her loan is now defunct. Its parent company filed for bankruptcy and dissolved. And the original bank that sold her the loan said it could not find a record of it.
“It is what some of us think is the next wave of the crisis,” said Kermit Lind, a clinical professor at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law and an expert on foreclosure law.
The United States can do nothing to stop North Korea from breaking international law in the next 10 days by firing a missile that is unlikely to be shot down by the U.S. or its allies, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Sunday.
Appearing on "FOX News Sunday," Gates said North Korea "probably will" fire the missile, prompting host Chris Wallace to ask: "And there's nothing we can do about it?"
"No," Gates answered, adding, "I would say we're not prepared to do anything about it."
Deutsche Bank AG Chief Risk Officer Hugo Banziger said the global credit crisis is “far from over” and global financial regulations must be overhauled to regain investor trust.
“We are in the middle of it,” Banziger, 53, said today at an event at the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management. The industry has “an opportunity” to build a stable financial system that seeks higher capital buffers, and encourage investors to return money to the market and help stem the crisis, he said.
Deutsche Bank in February reported its first annual deficit in more than 50 years after the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression pummeled bond and stock trading. The crisis has caused $1.3 trillion in losses for financial companies worldwide, a total that may climb to more than $3 trillion, Banziger said today, citing forecasts.
Deutsche Bank has gained 40 percent this month in Frankfurt trading, valuing the bank at 18 billion euros ($24 billion), and eclipsing the 5 percent advance in the Bloomberg Europe Banks and Financial Services Index of 65 companies. The bank fell 10 percent to 28.75 euros in trading today.
The German bank skirted the worst of the U.S. subprime mortgage collapse by betting against the bonds that contributed to credit losses and writedowns at the world’s largest financial companies and forced government-led bailouts from Berlin to London to Washington.
Banks are quietly declining to take possession of properties at the end of the foreclosure process, most often because the cost of the ordeal — from legal fees to maintenance — exceeds the diminishing value of the real esta
Originally posted by Hastobemoretolife
There is going to be decades of class action suits by the time this is over. Even when the market does recover and everything some how miraculously holds together, it is still going to be a roller coaster ride because companies won't be able to pay out the judgments or settlements. Considering that America is even a 1/10 of what it is now.
Originally posted by Hastobemoretolife
reply to post by irishchic
That reminds me of something that happened a few decades back called the Great Depression.
Deja Vu. It happening all over again almost exactly the same.
[edit on 30-3-2009 by Hastobemoretolife]
Originally posted by Hx3_1963
DESCENT INTO THE DEPTHS (1930):
The Collapse of Agriculture
www.futurecasts.com...'30.html
Here's a nice read on what we have to look forward to...and notice the dates...similar???
[edit on 3/30/2009 by Hx3_1963]
Originally posted by marg6043
I think I am losing my mind.
Many of GM’s dealers will receive lavish buyouts as an inducement to close their doors, for a total cost in the billions of dollars. That’s disgusting, but it’s required both by GM’s contracts with them and by the welter of state laws that protect the dealers. (If you want to know who the political power brokers are in any given city or town, look for the car dealers.)
This is going to be kept scrupulously out of the news, because car dealers contribute huge sums to every last man and woman in Congress and the Senate. The public was ready to torch the private residences of AIG executives, but they won’t make a peep about paying billions of their own hard-earned dollars to provide a cushy retirement for thousands of already-rich auto dealers.