{"id":35159,"date":"2018-06-17T07:15:54","date_gmt":"2018-06-17T12:15:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=35159"},"modified":"2018-06-17T07:16:16","modified_gmt":"2018-06-17T12:16:16","slug":"the-pension-train-has-no-seat-belts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=35159","title":{"rendered":"The Pension Train Has No Seat Belts"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

The Pension Train Has No Seat Belts<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
\n

In describing various economic train wrecks these last few weeks, I may have given the wrong impression about trains. I love riding the train on the East Coast or in Europe. They\u2019re usually a safe and efficient way to travel. And I can sit and read and work, plus not deal with airport security. But in this series, I\u2019m concerned about economic<\/em> train wrecks, of which I foresee many coming before The Big One which I call The Great Reset<\/strong>, where all the debt, all over the world, will have to be \u201crationalized.\u201d That probably won\u2019t happen until the middle or end of the next decade. We have some time to plan, which is good because it\u2019s all but inevitable now, without massive political will. And I don\u2019t see that anywhere.<\/p>\n

Unlike actual trains, we as individuals don\u2019t have the option of choosing a different economy. We\u2019re stuck with the one we have, and it\u2019s barreling forward in a decidedly unsafe manner, on tracks designed and built a century ago. Today, we\u2019ll review yet another way this train will probably veer off the tracks as we discuss the numerous public pension defaults I think are coming.<\/p>\n

Last week, I described the massive global debt problem. As you read on, remember promises<\/em> are a kind of debt, too. Public worker pension plans are massive promises. They don\u2019t always show up on the state and local balance sheets correctly (or directly!), but they have a similar effect. Governments worldwide promised to pay certain workers certain benefits at certain times. That is debt, for all practical purposes.<\/p>\n

If it\u2019s debt, who are the lenders? The workers. They extended \u201ccredit\u201d with their labor. The agreed-upon pension benefits are the interest they rightly expect to receive for lending years of their lives.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Pension Train Has No Seat Belts In describing various economic train wrecks these last few weeks, I may have given the wrong impression about trains. I love riding the train on the East Coast or in Europe. They\u2019re usually a safe and efficient way to travel. And I can sit and read and work, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2889,8226,1816],"class_list":["post-35159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-demographics","tag-john-mauldin","tag-pensions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35159"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35161,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35159\/revisions\/35161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}