Military retirement fund looted!

[fknobbit]

Interesting that the Bush Administrating and house repukes can cry they can't give the retired disabled their retirement because of cost, while stealing the retirement fund.



http://www.military.com/NewContent?file=Youmans_092603

[OneBlueSky]

1. my hunch is that there are NO federal trust funds anywhere . . .

every one of them has likely been looted, the cash replaced by worthless IOUs from the government . . . social security, military, railroad, whatever . . . that cash just becomes part of the current year's spending, so that the already disastrous deficit isn't twice as bad (which it actually is) . . . at some point, the chickens will come home to roost . . . gonna be a helluva explosion, chicken guts coating the landscape as far as the eye can see . . .

[elfin]

2. They are hoping the roost doesn't happen til 2005. eom

[havocmom]

3. no one really thought they were just stealing from our grand children

They will take every penny from every source. They mean to create a different world from the one we all know, worked for and counted on.

There is not much real creativity out there in the 'business' world. Just cost cutting via personell cost cutting and juggling the books. They have probably sold all the stocks they will sell, having separated average citizens from their nesteggs and sucked up all available investment $$.

Now they intend to finish us off. Raid the treasury via questionable contracts while holding our troops hostage. (What would you call it when the troops are far away and at the mercy of mess halls provided by Halliburton?) Juggle the books the same way the corporations did to puff up their profiles to lure investors, grab the monies, force the end of any program which acts as a safty net (no matter how tattered already) due to the 'budget deficit' which they created in the first place.

Welcome to the dark ages. Bow quickly to your lords and masters and perhaps they will toss you enough crumbs to keep you alive for tehir amusement. Never, never realize that if we all just stayed home from work and the marketplace, they would be at our mercy.

[Neecy]

4. correct me if I'm wrong...

But if a CEO of an American corporation looted his company's pension fund, wouldn't he go to prison for that?

[DulceDecorum]

5. Saddam

used to cut off the right hand off for the first offense and the left hand for the second.
Nowadays, Iraqis get shot for looking sideways at roadblocks. It is called progress.

Where is Kenny Boy hiding these days anyway? The Lincoln bedroom?

[Vitruvius]

6. No CEO will ever go to jail for LOOTING his company's pension fund because

the best ways for CEOs to LOOT pension funds are "all perfectly legal".

Why? Because the big-business Rethugnican rich write the laws, the better to LOOT the rest of us.

For example: all during the 1990s boom, CEOs were pulling assets out of pension funds and adding them to their companies' profits and handing themselves big raises & bonuses for "creating value" for the stockholders.

How could they do this? Well, with the stock market going up, the stocks in the pension funds went up -- so the pension funds were technically "over-funded". And the CEOs pulled out every nickel they 'legally' could.

Now the stock market is down, the stocks in the pension funds are down -- and the CEOs are telling us that our pension funds are in trouble -- because without the stock the CEOs took out, the pension funds are now under-funded.

Quick example: suppose Acme Mf'g has a pension fund with 1,000,000 stocks valued at $10 a share, for a total value of $10,000,000. Suppose the stock value doubles to $20 a share; the pension fund is now worth $20,000,000. The CEO takes out 500,000 shares, sells them for $10 million dollars, adds the $10 million to the company's profit and hands himself a $1 million dollar bonus for doing so. All perfectly legal under present law because there's still $10 million in the pension fund.

Then the stock goes right back down to $10 per share. The pension fund is down to $5 million dollars, and the CEO tells the workers that their pension fund is underfunded, and they will get only half their pensions.

And it's all perfectly legal. Loot the pension fund when the market goes up, stiff the workers when the market goes back down.

And almost ALL of the Fortune 500 companies pulled this stunt. And the government will NOT put the 500 CEOs and CFOs of those companies in jail. Ever.

Too bad for the workers -- i.e. you and me.

Vitruvius

P.S: The Bu$h administration is allowing big business to forcibly convert 'fixed-benefit' pension plans to 'defined contribution' plans where you will receive only a fraction of what you were promised. Thus covering the CEOs for the assets they looted out of the pension funds.

And the CEOs get to keep their bonuses for looting the pension funds, and they get a big Bu$h tax cut for the rich on top of it.

[Jackpine Radical]

7. You mean like maybe Ken Lay.

I guess he's doing 10 to 20 at hard labor in the Caymans or somewhere.