Domain Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Thrifts
Queen of Sky posted the following:
BTW, I have acquired the domain name queenofsky.net. Please use this URL to visit my site from now on . Thanks! (Just make sure you do not go to queenofsky.com by mistake--- that site is IN NO WAY affiliated with me.)
Well, THAT little statement begs for investigation. Oops, this is NOT WORK SAFE.
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Well, let's return to queenofsky.net:
2.) Yes, United Airlines has defaulted on its pensions. How nice. And it looks like Delta et al. may follow.
3.) Delta's stock hit an ALL-TIME (32-year) LOW today, closing under $3 a share! So much for my stock options!!! Here is a quote from a Marketwatch story today:
"In a most ominous statement, Delta warned that restructuring under Chapter 11 would be 'particularly difficult' because it lacks sufficient unencumbered assets for a meaningful DIP loan," wrote King. "That introduces the specter of liquidation over credit."
Boy, I sure am glad I got my measly vested pension benefits while I could!
Leaving the Queen for a moment, the whole United issue has spurred some posturing:
Lawmakers from both parties renewed calls for reforming the U.S. pension system in the wake of a plan by United Airlines to shift billions of dollars in benefit payments to the government.
Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, said the United decision "demonstrates the failure of outdated pension laws," and underscores the need for reforms to the system.
Boehner made the comments following a court decision enabling United to walk away from $6.6 billion in retirement obligations to 119,000 current and former union employees....
Boehner is expected to introduce a bill shortly that sets a new permanent interest rate that companies will use to calculate how much should be set aside to fund promised benefits.
The bill is also expected to increase disclosure about the plans so workers can understand their pension status better.
"How many companies have to fail, how many companies have to abandon their pension plans, how many companies have to downsize their pension benefits before President Bush and Congress pay attention?" asked Rep. George Miller, D-Calif.
The federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. will assume $6.6 billion in pension liabilities from United, and faces the added burden of other airlines and potentially automakers....
Karen Friedman, public policy director of the Pension Rights Center in Washington, said federal bailout of the pensions will have broad political reverberations.
"This is a huge public policy issue," said Friedman. "Is this going to mean that now other companies think they'll be able to walk into bankruptcy court...and come out home free?"
President Bush is calling for the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. to raise premiums and restrict struggling companies from promising more pension benefits to employees.
Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., said Wednesday morning the United pension issue underscores the need for keeping the Social Security system solvent.
"For United Airlines and US Airways employees, the steel industry before them, and probably the auto industry next, Social Security is the lynchpin to their retirement security," Emanuel said in a House floor speech....
Social Security as the "lynchpin" to retirement security? A Massachusetts professor thinks that President Bush - and, by implication, Democratic Congressman Emanuel - are "fundamentally wrong":
President Bush is fundamentally wrong about Social Security. His proposal shows he thinks Social Security is a pension plan – a form of individual savings towards retirement. But Social Security is not a pension plan. It is a social insurance program: it provides benefits to individuals according to their situation, rather than strictly according to their contributions.
Social Security is insurance against some of the misfortunes that may afflict us: old age, disability, and death. The Social Security Act of 1935, which created Social Security, also created other social insurance programs – like unemployment insurance and Aid to Families with Dependent Children. Since then, programs have been established to encourage workplace pensions and private savings, like 401K plans and Individual Retirement Accounts. But Social Security has remained apart because it is not a savings or pension plan; it is a program where we all protect one another against the maladies and afflictions of life.
Seen as an insurance program, Social Security should be evaluated according to different criteria than one would use to evaluate a pension plan. Some economists and administration officials have criticized Social Security because of the low rate of return some retirees receive for their lifetime contributions. By the same logic, they might criticize my homeowner’s insurance plan because after 16 years, I have paid over $8,000 into it without receiving any benefits. Have I wasted my money on a bad investment? No – because it’s not an investment, it’s an insurance plan....
Of course, the Libertarians think that all of the above are crazy:
Politicians in Washington are stealing your future.
Every year, they take 12.4% of your income to prop up their failed Social Security system - a system that is heading toward bankruptcy.
If you are an American earning the median income of $31,695 per year, and were given the option of investing that same amount of money in a stock mutual fund, you would retire a millionaire - without winning the lottery or a TV game show.
That million dollars would provide you with a retirement income of over $100,000 per year - about five times what you could expect from Social Security.
Even a very conservative investment strategy would yield three times the benefits promised by Social Security.
Libertarians believe you should be able to opt out of Social Security and invest your money in your own personal retirement account. An account that you own and control - one that politicians can't get their hands on.
Republicans and Democrats say it can't be done - that your Social Security taxes are needed to pay benefits to today's retirees. Instead of letting you invest in your own future, they want you to have faith that someone else will pay your benefits when it comes time for you to retire.
Although most won't admit it publicly, their "solutions" to the Social Security crises all come down to some combination of tax increases and benefit cuts.
Libertarians know that there's a better way.
Countries like Chile, Mexico, Britain, and Australia have successfully made the transition from their failed Social Security systems to healthy systems based on individual retirement accounts. In Chile, over 90% of workers have opted out of the government-run system. It's time America did as well.
The federal government owns assets worth trillions of dollars - assets that it simply doesn't need to perform its Constitutional functions. By selling those assets over time, we can keep the promises that were made to today's retirees, and to those nearing retirement, while freeing the rest of America from a failed Social Security system.
Libertarians will introduce and support legislation to give you that choice, and put you in control of your own retirement future.
The Cato Institute wrote this in 1997. This was presumably before the bipartisan fix that extended Social Security for another few decades.
America's Social Security system will go bust in 2010. As political leaders scramble to save it, they've overlooked an obvious free-market solution that works. They need only look at Chile.
Pay-as-you-go social security systems destroy the link between contributions and benefits, between effort and reward. Everyone tries to minimize what he puts into the system while trying to maximize through political pressure what he can get out of it. That's why pay-as-you-go plans are going bankrupt all over the world.
Chile faced that problem in the late '70s. As secretary of labor and social security, I could have postponed the crisis by playing at the edges, increasing payroll taxes a little and slashing benefits a little. But instead of making some cosmetic adjustments, I decided to undertake a structural reform that would solve the problem once and for all.
We decided to save the idea of a retirement plan by basing it on a completely different concept -- one that links benefits and contributions.
Chile allowed every worker to choose whether to stay in the state-run, pay-as-you-go social security system or to put the whole payroll tax into an individual retirement account. For the first time in history we have allowed the common worker to benefit from one of the most powerful forces on earth: compound interest.
Some 93% of Chilean workers chose the new system. They trust the private sector and prefer market risk to political risk. If you invest money in the market, it could go up or down. Over a 40-year period, though, a diversified portfolio will have very low risk and provide a positive rate of real return. But when the government runs the pension system, it can slash benefits at any time....
We guaranteed benefits for the elderly -- we told those people who had already retired that they had nothing to fear from this reform. We also told people entering the labor force for the first time that they had to go to the new system.
Today, all workers in Chile are capitalists, because their money is invested in the stock market. And they also understand that if government tomorrow were to create the conditions for inflation, they would be damaged because some of the money is also invested in bonds -- around 60%. So the whole working population of Chile has a vested interest in sound economic policies and a pro-market, pro-private-enterprise environment.
There have been enormous external benefits: the savings rate of Chile was 10% of gross national product traditionally. It has gone up to 27% of GNP. The payroll tax in Chile is zero. Of course we have an estate tax and an income tax, but not a payroll tax. With full employment and a 27% savings rate, the rate of growth of the Chilean economy has doubled....
So, let's see what Lyndon LaRouche has to say about Chile:
Lie No. 3:"I think some members of Congress could take some lessons from Chile, particularly when it comes to how to run our pension plans. Our Social Security system needs to be modernized."—George W. Bush in Chile, April 2001.
TRUTH: Social Security privatization was imposed in Chile by the fascist military dictatorship of General Pinochet, which by 1980 had already destroyed the labor movement, depressed the wages of Chileans, exiled and assassinated opposition leaders, and was selling off state companies to foreign bankers, cheap; then they turned over public pension funds to the same bankers. A generation later, most Chilean retirees, with their "private accounts," don't even qualify for a minimum pension, and have to depend on government minimum retirement of welfare payments. Chile's privatization is adjudged a failure by the Chilean government and even by the World Bank.
The British privatization of public pension funds has also failed.
I seem to have strayed off topic, so I'll end this with a picture of a very white woman.
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