Monday Meltdown – Greece And China Race To Default

Told you so on Greece!  

And Greece is only the first country to default, it won’t be the last as aging populations are the proverbial bill that now has to be paid by countries who used their retirement systems as piggy banks to fund deficit spending they never should have engaged in in the first place (cough, America, cough, cough!). Greece’s pension deficit is 9% of their $242Bn GDP or $24Bn – really a drop in the bucket of their $365Bn total debt, but it’s the pension funds their ECB creditors insist on raiding to balance the books despite the fact that it will actually KILL PEOPLE to cut benefits further at this point.  

The Banksters at the ECB and IMF don’t care how many old people starve as long as they can extend and pretend on their payments for another few quarters.  Of course, their actions exacerbate the problem as Greece’s austerity-collapsing stock market (and low bond rates) has destroyed $28Bn of pension fund value since 2012 alone.  As part of a package of savings and tax increases, Greece’s creditors are demanding the government cut pensions by the equivalent of 1% of gross domestic output, a more rapid clampdown on early retirees and for supplementary pensions to be financed by contributions, not by the state (which would effectively mean cutting them further).  

Look at the spiral Greece has fallen into:  20.5% of Greece’s 11M people are over 65 (and there are currently 400,000 new pension applications on hold due to Government cutbacks) while, because of the austerity measures being undertaken to pay off debts, 50% of the youths in the country (16-24) are unemployed – meaning they can’t contribute to the pension system.  It’s not like Greek pensions are generous, either, with half of them below the poverty limit of $775/month.  In fact Greece’s (EL on this chart) spending per beneficiary is in the low middle of the EU pack: