Pensions Will Be Wiped Out In America: “Perfectly Primed For the Greatest Financial Disaster”

This article was written by Michael Snyder and originally published at the Economic Crisis blog.

Editor’s Comment: The problem with waiting for a gigantic disaster to unfold is witnessing how thoroughly wired for demolition the whole thing is. The set up has been precise, even if ugly and basal in its fall. The Federal Reserve has long fed or starved panic and disaster with its creation of money, with the pumping of the prime, or the contraction of money supply. Now, after 8 years of Obama and a “recovery” from the 2008 economic crisis that has been based around unlimited liquidity, a major hot potato has been passed around for all those drenched in debt, and dependent upon a system that works.

Public pensions systems are the god-awful nightmare in the basement that threatens to make any such crisis – perhaps initially centered only around Wall Street behaviors – much, much worse by scale. Rather than lock boxes, they have become heavy-abused IOUs cash stashes, and in the most recent decades, these ‘vehicles’ for pay-it-later investing have been tossed around by private equity firms. They are agents for attempting to grow pension values on the open market, but they are also vulnerable as a carcass of ill-guarded funds that are easily spent on risky investments, and there to take the loss, while those who’ve done the betting once again go on the run.

The Ticking Time Bomb That Will Wipe Out Virtually Every Pension Fund In America

by Michael Snyder

Are millions of Americans about to see the big, juicy pensions that they were counting on to fund their golden years go up in flames in the biggest financial disaster in U.S. history? When Bloomberg published an editorial entitled “Pension Crisis Too Big for Markets to Ignore“, it simply confirmed what a lot of people already knew to be true.  Pension funds all over America are woefully underfunded, and they have been pouring mind boggling amounts of money into very risky investments such as Internet stocks and commercial mortgages.  Just like with subprime mortgages in 2008, this is a crisis that everyone can see coming well in advance, and yet nothing is being done about it.

On a day to day basis, Americans generally don’t think very much about pensions.  Most of those that have been promised pensions simply have faith that they will be there when they need them.

Unfortunately, the truth is that pension plans all over the country are severely underfunded, and this has already resulted in local fiascos such as the one that we just witnessed in Dallas.

But what happened in Dallas is just the very small tip of a very large iceberg.  According to Bloomberg, unfunded pension obligations on a national basis “have risen to $1.9 trillion from $292 billion since 2007″…

As was the case with the subprime crisis, the writing appears to be on the wall. And yet calamity has yet to strike. How so? Call it the triumvirate of conspirators – the actuaries, accountants and their accomplices in office. Throw in the law of big numbers, very big numbers, and you get to a disaster in a seemingly permanent state of making. Unfunded pension obligations have risen to $1.9 trillion from $292 billion since 2007.

And of course that $1.9 trillion number is not actually the real number.

That same Bloomberg article goes on to admit that if honest math was being used that the real number would actually be closer to 6 trillion dollars…

So why not just flip the switch and require truth and honesty in public pension math? Too many cities and potentially states would buckle under the weight of more realistic assumed rates of return. By some estimates, unfunded liabilities would triple to upwards of $6 trillion if the prevailing yields on Treasuries were used. That would translate into much steeper funding requirements at a time when budgets are already severely constrained. Pockets of the country would face essential public service budgets being slashed to dangerous levels.

So where are all of these pensions eventually going to come up with 6 trillion dollars?

That is a very good question.

Ultimately, even if financial conditions stay as stable as they are right now, a whole lot of people are not going to get the money that they were promised.

But things will get really “interesting” if we see a major downturn in the financial markets.  According to Dave Kranzler, if the stock market were to fall by 10 percent or more and stay there for a number of months, that “would cause every single public pension fund to blow up”.  And Kranzler is also deeply concerned about the tremendous amount of exposure that these pension funds have to commercial mortgages…

Circling back to the mall/REIT ticking time-bomb, while the Fed can keep the stock market propped up as means of preventing an immediate nuclear melt-down in U.S. pensions (all of which are substantially “maxed-out” in their mandated equities allocation), the collapse of commercial mortgage-back securities (CMBS) will have the affect of launching a nuclear sub-missile directly into the side of the U.S. financial system.

The commercial mortgage market is about $3 trillion, of which about $1 trillion has been packaged into asset-backed securities and stuffed into yield-starved pension funds. Without a doubt, the same degree of fraud of has been used to concoct the various tranches in these CMBS trusts that was employed during the mid-2000’s mortgage/housing bubble, with full cooperation of the ratings agencies then and now. Just like in 2008, with the derivatives that have been layered into the mix, the embedded leverage in the commercial mortgage/CMBS/REIT model is the financial equivalent of the Fukushima nuclear power plant collapse.

I have previously talked about the ongoing retail apocalypse in the United States which threatens to make so many of these commercial mortgage securities go bad.  It is being projected that somewhere around 3,500 stores will close in the months ahead, and this is going to absolutely devastate mall owners.  In turn, it is inevitable that a lot of their debts will start to go bad, and pension funds will be hit extremely hard by this.

But the coming stock market crash is going to hit pension funds even harder.  Stocks are ridiculously overvalued right now, and if they simply return to “normal valuations”, pension funds are going to lose trillions of dollars.

We are talking about a financial tsunami that will be absolutely unprecedented in our history, and yet investors continue to act like the party can last forever.  In fact, we just learned that margin debt on Wall Street has just hit another brand new record high…

The latest data from the New York Stock Exchange show margin debt, or cash borrowed to buy shares, hit a record $528.2 billion in February, up from its prior high of $513.3 billion in January.

Of course my regular readers already know that margin debt also shot up to dramatic peaks just before the last two stock market crashes as well…

Prior periods when margin debt hit records occurred around stock market peaks, including 2000 when the dot-com stock boom went bust, and 2007 when stocks began to crater amid early signs of trouble in the housing market ahead of the 2008 financial crisis.

Margin debt jumped 22% from the end of 1999 before peaking in March 2000 at $278.5 billion, the same month stocks peaked. In 2007, margin debt shot up to $381.4 billion in July, three months before stocks topped.

We are perfectly primed for the greatest financial disaster in American history, and yet very few people are sounding the alarm.

This massive financial bubble is a ticking time bomb, and when it finally goes off it is going to wipe out virtually every pension fund in the United States.

This article was written by Michael Snyder and originally published at the Economic Crisis blog.

Are You “Living In a Death Spiral”? These 6 States Will Collapse During the Next Recession

Being on the hook is not going to be pretty when interest rates are raised back up, and debts come due. At a personal level, it will mean more stress and juggling to make ends meet. For the larger economy, it will mean cities and states unable to meet obligations or balance their budgets – ending in bankruptcy, and bailouts. Meanwhile, millions of people are relying on that money to keep coming in order to survive. Something is going to go very wrong.

Relying upon government to function and send you money is not a secure plan.

The mathematics are terrifying and dismal, and so is being caught up in these collapsing states.

In the next phase of the financial crisis, the debt supercycle will become the most defining feature of the big hurt that will fall on nearly everyone.

That’s the dire warning that Goldman Sachs issued about what they termed the Third Wave of the global collapse. But it hasn’t come, at least not yet:

This wave is characterised by rock-bottom commodities prices, stalling growth in China and other emerging-markets economies, and low global inflation, Goldman Sachs analysts led by Peter Oppenheimer said in a big-picture note.

This triple whammy has its roots in the response to the first two waves of crisis — the banking collapse and European sovereign-debt crisis — and it is all part of the so-called debt supercycle of the past few decades.

Unfunded liabilities for pensions and other state benefits are threatening the security and future of an entire generation of retiring, hardworking Americans.

The debt will be shifted for as long as possible… but eventually, someone will have to come to terms with it. The black hole totals up to huge sums of money; no one can pay; and the system is bankrupted, or services rendered become inadequate and farcical.

Forbes contributor William Baldwin describes the acute problem of “death spiral states,” which could actually be as bad as it sounds. It affects dozens of cities and municipalities as well.

Does your state have more takers than makers? Check it out.

California has a powerful economy, with 14 million private-sector jobs. It also has burdens: welfare recipients (12.6 million), generously paid government employees (2.1 million) and people collecting government pensions (1.3 million).

Add up the numbers. There are 114 clients drawing from the government for every 100 people chipping in by working outside the government and paying taxes. We’re calling this the Feedme Ratio. Six states have a number over 100.

These states are at risk of going into a downward spiral in the next recession. The burdens will remain but too many of the providers—employers in the private sector—might shrink or decamp.

Right now, the biggest risks for a bankruptcy or collapse is in the these states, based upon the ratio between what Baldwin terms “makers” and “takers.” Basically, the socialist state is enveloping all prosperity:

• New Mexico – 148 dependents per private sector worker

• West Virginia – 116 dependents per private sector worker

• California – 114 dependents per private sector worker

• Mississippi – 111 dependents per private sector worker

• New York – 108 dependents per private sector worker

• Arkansas – 103 dependents per private sector worker

Detroit and Chicago top the lists of cities who wouldn’t be healthy in the ratio of makers/takers either, and would crumble in a debt crunch.

You can check on your state via this interactive map, though it is dated slightly to 2015.

A score under 100 means that the state has a net number of providers, and is theoretically on more solid ground. However, the pressures are endemic n the system, and no state is immune. For instance, Texas has a healthy score of 66.7; yet, the city of Dallas just announced that it is suspending pensions payments to city rescue workers and employees. There’s a serious disconnect.

Once things go downhill, violence, crime, looting, riots and the like become chronic problems. The police state presence is also an issue, and society goes on edge.

Everyone can feel the sinking depths, and order is about to implode. When things go primal, you do not want to be around to get caught up in it.

Being inside a major city on the day that the ATMs stop spitting out cash, or EBT cards don’t work will be an incredibly dangerous day. Relying upon government bureaucracy and functioning technology to meet your vital needs is a good position to be in during an emergency situation – be it economic crisis, hurricane, power grid failure or something else.

Joel Skousen described in great detail how to avoid the urban areas that will become completely dysfunctional nightmares at the first sign of a major emergency.

Your retreat should be strategically chosen to lay outside of certain regions, military targets and fragile climates. Knowledge of the back roads is essential to planning a route that won’t leave you stranded on the highway in endless gridlock.

Above all, it is advisable to avoid mass populated areas, especially big cities on the East and West Coast. People are prone to panic, and will be easily cut off from essential services become desperate. There are far too many bad apples in that ratio for any good to result.

Avoidance is key – and that is why living in a “death spiral” state like California or New York could be a major liability during a crisis, or alternately a prolonged collapse.

CalPers pension… a massive black hole that is merely carving a path for many failed states to come.

The future is austere if this equation isn’t balanced out:

Tom Chatham warns about the abrupt change that is coming home to roost in America. Things can get really bad, really quick.

But really, most of us don’t know how bad it will get:

Americans that have only known the post WWII prosperity are ill equipped and educated to deal with depression level living. Easy credit and instant gratification have created a nation of whining, self absorbed, entitlement minded people with no moral or mental toughness.

Doug Casey believes we are headed for what he calls a super depression created by the ending of a debt super cycle. The bigger the debt cycle the bigger the depression that follows. That’s how reality works and most people are not prepared for reality.

When this depression, which has already started, gets momentum, it will overwhelm the plans of a society that is expecting to get things like social security, pensions and payouts from retirement plans they have paid into for many years. All of those things will disappear almost overnight and leave society gasping and stupefied over what to do.

The big reveal is coming: inside that great big old lock box… is just another I.O.U.

Are you prepared for the future, and all the economic uncertainty it could bring?

Read more:

Screwed Over Retirees: Dallas Suspends Withdrawals From “Insolvent Pension System”

Goldman Sachs: The Third Wave of the Financial Crisis Is Upon Us

5 Urgent Warnings From Big Banks That the “Economy Has Gone Suicidal”

2008 Repeat Coming, Says George Soros, Harbinger of “Impending Financial Markets Crisis”

Debt Super Cycle Will Destroy U.S. Standard of Living Overnight “Leave Society Gasping and Stupefied”