Portugal Is Latest Country To Go "MF Global", Raid Pensions Funds To Delay Fiscal Death
About a year ago, we discussed the very troubling moves by insolvent countries such as Ireland and Hungary to "raid" their pensions funds for various fungible purposes, a move which in virtually every way a was a progenitor to the MF Global capital commingling, if not outright bankruptcy, and was explained as reflecting "a willingness by governments to use long-term assets to fill short-term deficits, including Ireland’s announcement last week that it would use the country’s €24bn National Pensions Reserve Fund “to support the exchequer’s funding programme” and Hungary’s bid to claw $15bn of private pension funds back to the state system." While it was unclear precisely what the use of funds was, back then FN speculated that it pension funds were being tapped to boost sovereign debt bids. Which if true means that Europe's peripheral pensioners have seen about a 20% drop in the NPV of their retirement assets. Today we add Portugal to the list of countries committing an MF Global type crime on a global scale: the Telegraph writes: "Portugal has raided €5.6bn (£4.8bn) of pension fund assets in a controversial scramble to meet its deficit targets." And since the money is once again implicitly and explicitly used to patch broken fiscal models, it is as good as gone. Which in a paradoxical way is almost welcome, as the true Arab Spring will not come to Europe (and America) until the citizens don't read, in clear writing, that their welfare state entitlement benefits are gone.... They are all gone. And at that point there will be truly nothing left to lose.
From Telegraph:
The cabinet agreed to transfer the assets from four of Portugal’s biggest banks to the state balance sheet.
The assets will be used to bridge a gap needed to meet the fiscal deficit target of 5.9pc of GDP set by the terms of the country’s €78bn bail-out from around 10pc in 2010.
"This measure is more than sufficient to meet the budget deficit goal in 2011," said Helder Rosalino, secretary of state for central administration, on Friday.
Portugal said it had informed the EU and IMF and assured them it would be a “one-off”. However the 2010 budget was met by shifting three pension plans from Portugal Telecom on to the public social security system. The liabilities don’t count, yet.
There have been no complaints from Eurostat but Raoul Ruperal from Open Europe said: “This can’t be seen as a future revenue stream in any way.”
We wonder if "one-off" in this case is the same "one-off" that was supposed to happen when the Fed bailed out the world's banks in a "one-off" event... over and over and over.
h/t Dylan
(16 votes)
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MF has gone Global!
Corzine, the largest pile of steaming hot walrus shit to emerge from the US since Ken Lay.
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Yeah, Drudge has been sleeping a lot lately.
Ah well, it was good while it lasted. :(
A man's gotta drink!
I mean eat!
I mean sleep. A man's gotta sleep.
Good thing the treasury already looted our social security system.. nothing left to steal.
Unless they can synthisize a swap and borrow against the reserves that SS Administration has.. just think about that one for a moment.
Oh.. and has Geithner paid FERS back for the $ .25 Trillion he appropriated from them before the debt increase?
And those funds were credited to employees accounts through deficit spending and corresponding borrowed money (treasuries).
So the treasury created a loan based on funds that came from a loan.
Sweet.
Good question about FERS. I saw it coming thanks to a friend and chose to withdrawl in full...pay my taxes (would have to anyhow) pay the penalty (dollar devaluing anyhow) and at least have something left.
Got physical?
Next one to go will probably be whatever is left in the postal pensions.
God only knows how they are going to handle that black hole except that they will have to be involved somehow.
Most folks don't even know they were turned into a GSE few years back, but that really doesn't matter because they(we) are on the hook one way or the other.
Sure don't want to see the entire postal service going postal.
Wait til vets' beneficiaries actually figure this out, starting a couple years ago:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-28/fallen-soldiers-families-denied-cash-payout-as-life-insurers-boost-profit.html
Trust us, the money's in the bank, check's in the mail, we're totally solvent! Just like MF Global!
That was an option. I chose to "gamble" on a TSP loan, paid it (myself) back, and opened another loan. I have to admit, when you think about instability and timing, it would be easier just to do what you did and take the tax hit, but so far "milking the cow" has worked according to plan.
The only retirement insurance to feel good about.
Don't forget, Democrats have been working themselves into a lather for years thinking of ways to nationalize individual retirement accounts.
sleep eat sex shit in no particular order
Thank you CW. It has been too quite on the news front for a day.
Grandma Bloodied At TSA Strip Search; Pants Down At JFK Airport
......TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein
A nice jewish girl protecting her host country.
You would think that Jews and Blacks would be strong Constitutionalists, just based on history lessons.
Now that is funny.
Let me ask Goldman and Sachs about that....
The old testament refers to the Jewish God as 'The Lord of Hosts'
THe Host with the most.
Oi LaVey
... after the strip search of a fellow jewish girl.
So what are you saying, it's a scam so the jews have another method to fleece US taxpayers?
Now all the jews will get 'brutalized', 'abused', 'holocausted' by TSA and their sons will sue for distress because their moms beanie was tossed?
It's another nice day for the slaves.
hey TSA fools! betcha all have cancer working in those open microwave ovens! hope y'all have great medicade! you're gonna need it, suckers! to all nurses and doctors, if you've got a TSA agent that's bedridden, strip 'em down, and leave 'em! extra bonus if you shove objects up their butts!!!!!
Combat dressed swat teams with automatic weapons?
USA, such a fine country you've become........
Europe is no longer a going concern. Sell off the good assets, convert the debt into equity....
Coming to the U.S. soon. They stole the taxpayers money by taxes through bailouts. That was not enough. Then they got the Federal Pensions, that will not be enough. Soon without warning everyone's money in their IRAs - and accounts will be taken..... but that will not be enough...... what will be after that..
The countries won't stop until they have every last penny from everyone.
It really is unfair to compare Ken Lay to Jon Corzine.
Sure, Lay's Enron made some really, really bad investment and trading decisions, grossly overpaid their executives, and used phony accounting to cover up their failures. But even Enron didn't brazenly steal money out of its customers accounts. Lay, Skilling and Fastow were really mundane financial fraudsters, albeit their scam was on a massive scale.
Jon Corzine has well and truly blazed new frontiers in financial fraud.
Like Ann Barnhardt says, Jon Corzine is not a stupid person. He didn't wake up one morning and think to himself, "I'm going to steal a billion dollars from customer accounts." Instead, he engineered the theft such that his political connections would allow him to get away with it.
Similarly, it's unfair to use steaming hot walrus shit to describe Corzine. You're confusing crap with crapitalism (ie, CRony cAPITALISM.)
Timmaugh did it so now he's pushing it. Pensioners will die off through govt policies anyway and govts know they'll never have to pay 50% of liabilities. Perfect forecasting right?
The US has been raiding Social Security for years........and all that is left behind is special treasury receipts. All the receipients will have to stand in line to collect from the treasury.
I dunno. I think both Mssrs. Soetoro and Madoff make Corzine look like a piker.
And it begins.
And it's all gone
But but but...they praaahhhmised!!! Its gubmint digitized paper! In in in a gubmint maintained digitized account!!!
When ya ain't got nuthin, ya got nuthin to lose kid.
It is a very dangerous situation when people have nothing left to lose.
Not to worry...our best & brightest are workin on it ;-)
I thought Bobby "bomb em all" McNamara was dead.
"It is a very dangerous situation when people have nothing left to lose". Are you joking people have lost everything and still dont have the balls to do anything .America amounts to fat fucks that will take it up the ass forever, and if somone did make a stand they would be by themselves because all the spineless would come up withan excuse as why not to join.
It actually stops right there. I've got my pension which comes in 30 years from. Ow already coverd ( i think) but for those who rely on a state pension of 800 euro a month it's already bad and if that one crumbles, god help us all!
What can they do? The retired i mean.
Over here retirerd people are allowed to go back to work to make a extra income, but who the fuck wants to go back into the workforce at age 70?
And what will they do? Clean toilets?
Just talked to a government employee on Thursday. He's retiring next year at age 57, will be collecting his government pension, and is going to work for... the government under contract.
What the fuck ? Does anyone that collects a government paycheck understand the taxes, borrowing, and printing this takes ? No wonder everything is going to hell.
Print, Benny, print, let's get this fire going !
In a word, no.
They got *theirs* and that's *all* that actually matters to them.
Like rats....for real.
Never mind where or who the "money" came from.
These kinds of people would sell out anyone to save themselves.
Zero integrity.
I met a million and one people like this when I was in DoD Civil Service. In fact, under Secretary Rumsfeld's tenure, this practice was encouraged, because, due to some accounting shenanigans, it was considered "cheaper" to hire contractors than it was to hire actual government workers. We called it "the purge." Once Secretary Gates came in, he canceled most of Rumsfeld's intitiatives, including this one, and so the government had to spend even more money re-hiring/re-training government workers that had been reassigned ("reprogrammed") to other commands during the "purge."
Most of my fellow government workers were pretty astute, and they generally seemed to understand the iron triangle of printing, taxes, and borrowing, but they had mortgages to pay, and kids to put through school, and they weren't about to screw all that up just because the government was going broke before their very eyes.
I had the "pleasure" of working some Forest Circus "contracts" back in '07. At the Baldwin field office of the Huron-Manistee N.F., where they hadn't had a timber sale in over three years and most of the forest was falling down, and they were clearing areas to protect the Blue Karner Butterfly (endangered), I heard this from downstairs, as four of the ten "workers" were talking:
"Well, it's the first of the month. Our welfare checks must be in."
Man, was I pissed that these useless fucks could sit around, circle jerk, and have Uncle Sugar farm out the work they should have been doing to one of the few "contractors" in the state that could actually plow through the twenty-something pages of forms to "qualify" to do the USFS's job for "cheaper" than they could.
Not unique to government. I know people in private sector that do this. Course, not for long as almost no one young has a pension in private sector US anymore.
It will go back to older times where the parents shack up with the kids. The kids work and the parents help tend the home, contribute a few hundred toward the food and energy bill and watch the Grandkids.
Those unfortunates without family will be in awful poorly run State facilities. Ageing folks don't live long with medical rationing, poor nutrition and being cold due to choosing between expensive medicine and energy.
I'm 70 and I'll clean toilets. Then go to work at my second job as a short-order cook. Watch what you eat! And speaking of eating - check out what real men eat
http://www.plus961.com/2011/11/lebanese-army-commando-eating-a-chicken-alive/
Hope he flosses to get those feathers out of his teeth.
But a big difference between Europe and the US is that US citizens have several hundred million firearms and Europeans (sans the Swiss of course) have none. I expect "blood in the streets" and martial law before it's all over. I hope I'm wrong.
It's true in the cities as there's a big control over there but at the country side, you would notice that ever roadsign has bullet holes.
Hunting rifles are big business in europe and even if open gun trade is illegal, i know a few place where you can buy guns and get them by mail.
There are also a hughe amount of antique weapons. Which are totally unaccounted for.
Second: look at the bosnian war. Anybody with a little bit of technical skills cn make a working gun. You can even make a pipe gun in 10 minutes and cartouches can be bought everywhere.
people can take a lot of hardship before they will actually rebel. Europeans and Americans are not even close to being hungry enough to rebel. The revoluton will start somewhere like India or China...and it won't be pretty.
You have heard about SB 1867 passing 97-3, yes?
The only thing Americans do with there firearms is polish them.
Wrong. Americans use them regularly at the range, practising, go home and clean them, and re-stock spent ammo. Belive me, I see them at the range every week - teaching their kids, teaching their wives and girl friends, and getting smaller groupings themselves. EVERY WEEK I see them. And EVERY WEEK the range is getting more and more crowded. And no wonder, one of the best selling items LAST WEEK on Black Friday was fire arms. Americans polish their firearms on the front porch but take that as a warning - on the back porch they're plinking away, practising and getting a better aim. You misunderstand the situation and Americans.
And.....It's gone:
http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/222624/the-importance-of-saving-money
coming soon to a country you live in
Markets will love it, risk of the table.
Lol
free money
.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlY23mTFVmU
And don't forget that Geithner took half of one trillion dollars out of the US pension system before the debt ceiling was razed.
Nice.
And just in today. Black Friday, apt name, saw the largest increase in the sale of.....Guns in the history of black Friday.
Up 35%. The largest "single day increase in sales"....Ever.
Change we can believe in!
That' why God (with a capital G) created money. To buy food and guns:) All else is excess baggage:))
To hear ol' Moses tell it, honest weights and measures (including money) and scheduled debt jubilees were features of an infinitely stable and sustainable system. But of course, certain folks like bankers and politicians know better that that.
Wasn't this already done in the US, raiding federal pension funds to keep the government running when the first debt limit was being debated?
This is why there's been nothing but a muted response to the theft by MF Global. It's what the Obama regime plans to do too: seize 401K and IRA accounts to stave off collapse.
It dosn't really seem nessessary in the US. It would just piss people off. They have a printing press to make up any shortfalls and are willing to use it.
It will be done when the War starts.
It is Patriotic to give your pension to fund the US. It is your duty as an American!
At my age by the time I get to retirement there will nothing left anyways. Why should I feel sorry for those older folks who had good careers while they were looting my future?
Why do you feel sorry for these folk , if they cannot see this coming then they are to dumb to care about. fuck um
Sell it, Market it, "Your Duty to America", "be Patriotic"
And don't forget to sell the great American divide - race wise, age wise - it was the blacks, the asians, the old people,
In the end, I hope we remember it was the fucked up government (and GS) that fucked us all - not our neighbors, not our grandparents.
Keep your eyes on the prize (Squids). Especially when they emerge from their bunkers 1 year after TSHTF.
They have a printing press to make up any shortfalls and are willing to use it.
DOn't you get it yet? That's EXACTLY how they plan to seize your 401K: what good is your $1 million if they infalae away their own debt and a loaf of bread costs $3000? Or how bout a Weimar example : 4Triilion marks was worth 1 dollar in 1923. That was a planned collapse
Right that was my point. They don't need to seize it.
If they use the printing press they seize much more than retirement funds, for example wages. They'll try to seize retirement funds more directly.
Well there is a difference. In theory, most 401Ks are holding equities, not debt instruments like bonds or cash. While a stock still might be paper, it does represent partial ownership. Bonds will be worth nothing.
Zero, that statement is true as long as a business tied to an equity stays in business. If it goes Chapter 7, the stock becomes worthless.
In Portugal?
Relax pal. Who are you voting for in 2012?
Nothing like a little pension-tension to deal with during your comfortable retirement years.
Ha! You didn't seriously think that you were going to get what we promised did you? Ha!
We also promised disaster relief, highway maintenance, food safety, jails for criminals, healthcare and oh yeah freedom of expression! HA!
I know we promised but......HA!
LOL!!! It's the American way!
Standard Operating Procedure
"It would be a one off"
Yeah right.
Just like the Central Banks saying that their monetization programs are "temporary".
Once this sh*t starts, there is no stopping it.
Check out this latest from Mauldin (who I read occasionally to see what a certain mindset is thinking). Note how he drops the Germany will have to give up it's sovereignty idea so casually, giving it about the same importance as someone giving up a second piece of pie after dinner.
Does anyone know Mauldin personally? Is he as big an arrogant meglomaniac as he sounds? He even warns that the U.S. has to do the same. Wonder if he wants to also give up his freedom as an individual? People have lost all perspective. Insanity reign. It will be interesting to see how the Portuguese handle this latest theft, and whether Germans gladly hand over their sovereignty.
Below from Mauldin:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is from my friend Dennis Gartman, writing this morning:
"Turning to the ECB, the new President, Mr. Draghi, has obviously taken on the most difficult of jobs and we've no choice but to admire him for the audacity necessary to take on a role such as his… especially at a time such as this. Yesterday, Mr. Draghi made a statement that we find tectonic-plating-shifting-like in nature when he said firstly that the ‘Downside risks to the economic outlook have increased.'
"They have indeed, and we've no problem with what he said for that is indeed the truth. Then, however, the plates shifted when he said, noting that the ECB's mandate, that price stability is to be maintained ‘in both directions.' In other words, the ECB's mandate forces the authorities to be concerned about deflationary risks as well as those inflationary.
"Did you hear the plates shifting? You should have for they have indeed shifted. Draghi's warning was that the authorities are just as concerned about deflation as inflation and that monetary expansion is to be considered just as has monetary contraction.
"So we are now… or shall soon be… faced with a monetary and political union that is manifestly different than that which the original united nations had signed up for AND we have a central bank intent upon fighting deflation as strongly as it has fought inflation. These are the attributes of a regime intent upon weakening, not strengthening, its currency in order to strengthen the economy and to save the union… if at all possible."
The coordinated central bank action will make dollars available to the ECB, which will in turn loan them to the national central banks, which presumably will loan them to their in-country banks, taking lower-quality collateral than the ECB (which under the rules they are allowed to do). Given the deflationary pressures that are the natural result of a recession and deleveraging/default, they can print a lot of money without igniting too much inflation. But I agree with Dennis; I just don't see how they can do so without seeing the valuation of the euro fall rather smartly.
Merkel and Sarkozy have told us they will meet Monday and announce a plan on December 9, when the full eurozone meets. Forget bazookas, this needs the equivalent of a howitzer. They are seemingly intent upon rewriting the treaty, which is the only way that the Germans will go along with any major ECB action. But by my reckoning, a few hundred billion, or even a trillion, is not major action, at least not on the level of what will be needed.
The price for German acquiescence will be a loss of sovereignty and the ability to run deficits of any real size for any appreciable length of time for the countries of Europe. Will the peripheral countries go along? Heck, forget them; will Finland go along? This situation has been coming along since the foundation of the eurozone. The early founders acknowledged that a tighter fiscal union would eventually be necessary if the euro experiment were to survive. And eventually is now. As in this month. Time is running out if they want to forestall a credit crisis that would be worse than 2008.
The world is watching, as what happens in Europe will affect us all, in every part of the globe. It could easily tip the US into recession, and it will only be worse for the emerging markets. For Europe, the Endgame is now. We can only hope they come up with a plan that avoids disorderly defaults and a crisis far graver than 2008. They have no good choices, only difficult ones and disastrous ones. Let us hope they choose wisely.
(And for my fellow Americans, note that we will face the same consequences if we do not get our own house in order, and very soon. This is more than an academic observation.)
I have found Mauldin to be a pompous ass and a compulsive name-dropper. And that is in print. I can only imagine how obnoxious and insufferable he must be in person.
All he cares about is selling books and seats at his seminars.
In case there's still any doubt, try to judge what they're going to do by looking at what they've done so far:
-They don't hesitate to legally hide where your tax money is going and how it can be seized in the night and used without Congressional or any approval process. FOIA request revealed only 2 years later that $7.7 Trillion were gifted to banks in 08.
-They don't hesitate to manipulate ostensibly "free" markets
-They will confiscate wealth through inflation if they have to, Bernank already promised you that one. AND make sure you have no protection from interest rates because he commands them.
-They can change the rules and laws on a whim: accounting practices? For the little people only. Jail for theft? Not if you're a crony. Taxes? Hahahahahahahahahahaha
Good point. I also suspect that at this point on the corruption curve, most large money movements by the banks and government are completely hidden. Money is only computer entries at this point and I would be very surprised if there are not multiple trillions moving about that we never hear of. The telegraphed moves, like the coordinated central bank effort of last week, are purely for optics - control of public perception. Your life and work and savings are but the flash of a neuron in the "animal spirits" mind they are controlling. They believe reality is only what you (the collective) believes. Economics is now simply control of mass moods and beliefs. Money only an ephemeral idea that we should believe in for the system to function.
Your life and work and savings are but the flash of a neuron in the "animal spirits" mind they are controlling.
Exactly. Pawns on a chess board. This is how absolute power corrupts absolutely. At first they exceed legal limits "for your own good" (ala 08 covert bailout and capital market operations). Then they inevitably have to keep the game going because one lie and pretend scenario has to be covered by another bunch of lies. Inevitably it reaches escape velocity where the only solution is to grab absolute power
Agreed, and yet I do not believe it is going to work even though the whole plan was so carefully constructed. People like Mauldin seem to be aligning themselves with what they see coming for the sake of favor in the future. But as always, evil never realizes that in seeking absolute control it destroys what it is trying to control. If any humans are alive 30 years from now, they will talk about the failed hubris and it's terrible and pointless toll.
Get out while you still can is the message from this powerful interview of Ann Barnhardt. Tyler should follow this lady for any material or interviews she comes out with.
Ann Barnhardt: The Entire Futures/Options Market Has Been Destroyed by the MF Global Collapsehttp://www.financialsense.com/financial-sense-newshour/guest-expert/2011/12/01/ann-barnhardt/entire-futures-options-market-destroyed-by-mf-global-collapse
Copied from somebody elses post in http://www.zerohedge.com/news/entire-system-has-been-utterly-destroyed-mf-global-collapse-presenting-first-mf-global-casualty
BEFORE giving any weight to her assessment, take a look at who she is and what she says. This woman is a right-wing religious wack-job -- she is dangerously crazy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCfbYkXtHuA&feature=related
It gets really good around 6:00, lol. Apparently, Satan inspired Mohammed to create Islam. Like I said, dangerously crazy.
Hey what do Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, and Syria have in common?
The are all Med States.
So why is the first move of the Military Industrial Complex to go after the Med States?
http://www.rollintl.com/roll/euroasiamap.gif
Because they are having "Arab Spring" revolutions that is going to turn all of them in nice little passive democracies that we can be proud of. And after that they'll all run to Israel and get down on their knees and kiss and lick Nuttyyoyo's ass and then we can all live happily ever after.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA