Countries around the world including the US have jumped on the band wagon to reduce the pensions of the workers. Rhode Island is backing away from their pension obligations, and the state of Massachusetts had their credit rating increased (by bank owned agencies) because of pension reforms.
Pensions for workers is not what caused the financial crisis, it was investing in Wall Street synthetic derivatives which had no real value behind them.
Now that these junk bonds are worthless and there’s no money for pensions, let‘s just blame the people, it’s easier than holding the banks accountable for fraud.
Nomi Prins states in her book ‘It Takes a Pillage’ a former Goldman Sachs employee went to work in the Italian government and encouraged them to deregulate banks similar to the deregulation on banking in this country. A few years later their economy is drained, and presto, they’re cutting back on pensions.
It just seems uncanny that the countries who invested in the Wall Street sub prime roulette now have to cut the pensions of the workers.
The banking crisis was one of the biggest transferences of wealth this country has ever seen, All made possible by bad bets sold on imaginary wealth and then bet against by the very banks that sold them, with all of us real people ultimately paying the price for their fraud.
Rather than advancing the theory that workers don’t deserve a comfortable retirement free from the poverty of old age, they should look into what happened when Wall Street banks played ‘bait and switch’ on pension plans.
But that’ll never happen, banks and the 1% have more power than this president. No wonder the workers are under attack.
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