Far too optimistic I think. The whole mess will blow sky high by 2016 and personally I'm going for 2014. We're 4 years into this mess and there's no sign of any proper recovery (1%ers excluded). It's a debt problem and those never go away, they only increase if no proper action is taken (shuffling the debt around is no long term solution but it does work in the short term). Most will be lucky, regardless of how much or little they have, to lose 33% of what they presently have, many will be wiped out. Be prepared, cash is a good asset right now mixed in with some Gold, but the best time to buy that is when they smash it, they always do...
I've been concerned about this for some time (gov conf. 401K in some form), and have thought about NOT contributing to my 401K, but am still doing that for tax purposes. Friends, co-workers believe I'm "over-the-top" the few times I've brought this up, but I believe we'll find out the hard way. (I believe the idea was first aired back in the 1990, under President Clinton, by the dems, but the reps killed it.) Now, back to today's item: The people in the USA will not get fed up, since the majority has very little money saved up for retirement. The government looks at numbers. And you gotta feed the masses, so if it comes out of your 401K, and mine, so be it. I'm sending this link to my kids, as a warning about putting too much money (faith) into ONE system. Maybe a taxable account is the way to go?! This is all about "the bank": Why did William Sutton rob banks" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Sutton
They defaulted on bonds denoted in foreign currency. All US debt is in dollars, so theoretically, there is no possibility of default. There is a possibility that foreign buyers would refuse to buy any more if we debased the currency, but what are the alternatives? Every country is debasing its currency.
There are two separate issues. One is existing retirement plans. I agree with you they are threatened by some combination of taxes, forced investments or, as in Argentina, forced conversion into a public system. Obama's tireless class envy rhetoric would fit this situation perfectly. "We have to have shared sacrifice." "It's not fair for some to have so much more than others." Blah blah blah. Since the vast majority have nothing saved, raiding private pensions would no doubt be quite popular in the coming banana republic america. The other issue is the tax deductions for contributions to current retirement plans. That is what the talk is about now. it is a big tax "expenditure" to use the liberal term. On the surface, it wqould seem counterproductive for the government to address the shortfall in social security and medicare by further weakening private retirement savings. However, democrats actually want everyone to be dependent on the government for their retirement. They probably assume that those who are saving are largely republicans anyway, so there is no downside to screwing them. Coupled with the government controlling health care, you would have a large bloc utterly dependent on government and therefore likely to lean heavily democrat.
actually they defaulted on its own currency debt they had a simple choice to pay debt and die in hyperinflation or default, devalue but save currency from complete collapse so they defaulted devalued around 200% but it wasn't trillions for loaf of bread if they had chosen not to default and print outcome would be very different
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