You and I agree on everything. I have been saying everything you mentioned, only to be repudiated by arrogant and ignorant Europeans in denial. I spent the first half of my life in Europe, and the past 25 years in the US, so I can say with confidence that the factors you mentioned will likely drive Europe faster into the Third World than Sarkoszy could say “Somalia”.
However, you are incorrect on only one point, namely about racist attitudes against non-Caucasian immigrants. Western Europeans are still societies of feudal mentality, so they are racist against anybody who is not of their own ethnic makeup. Frenchmen discriminate Spaniards, Spaniards discriminate Frenchmen, etc. However, they especially like to discriminate Eastern Europeans, which is particularly annoying to me, because most Eastern Europeans are far better educated, harder-working, and overall more decent human beings than most I met in the West.
Europe remains a feudal society with a very thin veneer of civilization to cover up the backwardness that lies beneath. They’d feel very comfortable in the company of Somali pirates…LOL
Vinny GOLDberg

It’s irrelevant. Americans are used to little social safety net. Go to Borders or Barnes and Noble and you’ll see 80 year olds stocking books on shelves. We are not afraid, nor are we ashamed to do it, and we always bounced back as a nation. We’ll be fine in the end.

However, I am more concerned that Europe will completely collapse once its social safety nets begin to crumble. Frenchmen, Spaniards, Italians, Greeks, Austrians, etc, are too unproductive, too entitled, too lazy, and too arrogant to be able to pull themselves up from the bootstraps. They will continue to do precisely what they did at the G20 last week, pointing the fingers at the US and others, while sinking into the abyss of becoming Third World as every day passes.

Vinny GOLDberg

When consumers stop consuming this banking system comes to a screeching halt. Without consumer demand requests for more credit/debt/money the banks just dry up due to their leverage ratios and no way to fund them as consumers now save or pay down debt when the banks need to loan or create more debt (so called growth).

Consumers, obviously, would survive no-growth phases except they are being taxed to prop up the banking system. A banking system we could live without.

How can one depend upon the gov for retirement? W$ and private industry has screwed it up so badly, decreased the potential of our now “hopeful” retirement, and cost us $trillions; why should we allow them the opportunity to play with our future retirement again? I do not know about you; but, I could retire on a $million W$ bonus and live comfortably in conjunction with SS.

As far as growth in business/manufacturing? Business moved to Asia/China to avoid legislative and customary infrastructure costs in the US which was the major impetus for the move besides the miniscule increase achieved by lower wages. They would have not moved for a change in direct labor cost as the content of labor is exceedingly low. The cost and length of the supply chain would have eaten them up.

What Ponzi scheme are you referring too? Madoff? State funding of pensions such as CalPer?

Retirement is based on growth, personal or otherwise. If no one is producing (maybe it’s shipped overseas) I don’t know where you expect to get pennies from heaven with low or no growth.

Government can’t even discourage pirates in row boats with destroyers or fund credit cards for digital tv signals without extensions, how can you expect and rely on government to take care of your retirement?

A Ponzi scheme ends when the bottom can’t support the top. Even being taxed to death won’t be enough.

I can’t seem to get numb enough; I am always stunned when I read these kind of comments.

Those poor, poor working fund managers being forced to look for high returns because some uncaring person went ahead and took the job with the pension.

Why that forces them to take high risks is not explained.

I wonder how many anonymous near-confessions happen on these boards.

In retrospect I guess pensions, like Social Security and 401Ks, were just too tempting a fruit for the banksters and their corrupt enablers in DC to not make a grab for. In the 80’s pin-striped thieves like Boesky and Milken enriched themselves and their partners to the tune of gazillions taking over “underperforming” companies, stripping the pensions and leveraging every conceivable asset the companies had by issuing junk bonds. The thing that left me appalled and furious at the time was that the courts and government did nothing to stop this. Millions of families who had counted on these pensions for security in their old age, had worked at these companies faithfully for their entire careers and who had, reasonably enough, viewed their pensions as a part of their hard earned compensation were left with nothing.

I was early into my career at the telephone company and a long way from retiring but I decided that if it was now OK to tear up contracts and rip off people’s pensions just as they approached or were already in retirement, then I’d better have a plan B. So I started saving heavily into my company’s 401k.

Along came the 90’s and the masters of the universe came up with another clever way to steal pensions – defined contribution plans. These plans shifted investment risk from the employer to employee and often left older workers with a much reduced “cash balance” resulting in greatly reduced payouts at retirement. Again, congress did nothing. The courts finally stepped in with rulings that the plans put out by IBM and others constituted age discrimination and the plans fell out of favor among corporations although workers near retirement at smaller companies below the court’s radar were still adversely affected, i.e. robbed.

Then in the 00’s we saw abuses of 401Ks with limited investment options and heavy emphasis on company stock ownership. These destroyed employees’ retirement savings at Enron, MCI, Lehman and scores of other craporations.

And don’t forget corporate friendly Fed policies that made it impossible to earn interest rates that beat inflation and led to serial bubbles which have destroyed an incalculable amount of household wealth.

The Rebooblicans did all they could to steal Social Security but, thank goodness, they failed. It might only be worth a dime on the dollar by the time the we retire, but at least it’s something.

The final act will start in about four years when the Fed looks at how many trillions it has poured into saving the financial crooks who caused this debacle. At that point it will only have three choices for dealing with an unbearable national debt: Default. Inflate it away. Call in the Army to put down the revolt. I think massive inflation is in our future. Just three years of 15% inflation will halve the debt. Of course, it will also halve the purchasing power of our savings. So there goes my plan B, the 401K.

A thirty year long unholy alliance between government, corporate and Wall St. kleptocrats has caused unbelievable harm to savers. It has made a joke of contracts. It has undercut integrity and fair dealing at every level of society. It has made saps and suckers out of the most responsible, prudent members of society. It has turned many of us who love and believe in our country into furious cynics.

I can understand people who buy a cheaper house down the block and walk out on the loan they hold on their current home. I get people who tell credit card companies to pound sand. It makes a sad kind of sense to me when people pour tar on their carpets and paint their walls with feces before leaving their foreclosed homes.

If I owed money I’d probably be doing the same thing but I’m just one of the poor stupid schmucks who worked hard, paid off the mortgage in 18 years, avoided credit cards, sacrificed, drove used cars, saved, paid bills and has now seen retirement savings go up in smoke for the umpteenth time.

What’s been done to my country really ought to be a crime.