Pensions of Union Workers Cut in Federal Budget (Wall Street is just as crooked as the mafia)

[Omaha Steve]

(Best quote: Wall Street people are just as crooked as the mafia)

Pensions of Union Workers Cut in Federal Budget

Snip:

And the other was a decision not to bail out the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the government's pension fund insurer. They've decided--they passed a new law. They rewrote the law. They declared the 1974 ERISA act protecting pensions illegal, and they said if pension funds cannot pay their retirees, they get to be cut back and they don't get to go to the government to get guarantee. We've abolished the government guarantee on pension funds if the pension fund is run by a labor union, meaning if a pension fund is a multiemployer fund that has more than one employer contributing to it, like airline funds, truckers funds, Teamsters funds if you're a truck driver, insurance employees, we're going to give the fund managers, mainly the financial managers on Wall Street, the right to cut back on these pensions that are due. So the pensions that people had expected to receive when they made their wage contract saying, well, we're not going to ask for as fast a wage increase if you give us security when we retire, all of this has been rewritten.

And the ironic thing is the Democrats led this fight against labor a year ago, this special ruling was put in, and people who were supposed to be Democratic liberals, like Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, decided to have something also radical in the new budget. They weren't going to report which representatives voted yes or no for these amendments. So the Democrats covered up their tracks, and you can't see that they were really behind the Wall Street constituency in saying, we're going to cut back the pensions.

And you can see what's on the mind, basically. The government said, look, we've got to balance the budget in the face of Obama's sort of escalating the military confrontation with Russia and China. And on the face of increased bailout for the banks, there's just not going to be enough money to guarantee the pension funds. So we can't do for the pensioners what we did for the bankers in 2008.

So this has turned out to be just an absolute disaster. Yeah, it looks like a lot of union pension funds and public service pension funds are going to go the way of what happened in Detroit and California cities, of being cut back when there's not enough.

FULL story at link.

Bio
Michael Hudson is a Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. His two newest books are The Bubble and Beyond and Finance Capitalism and its Discontents. His upcoming book is titled Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy.

Uploaded on Jan 2, 2015

UMKC Economics Professor Michael Hudson discusses how Wall Street will profit as workers' pensions get slashed

[sabrina 1]

1. Just despicable! And we supported Dems to STOP all of this!

[Wellstone ruled]

2. Yup,can't injure the 1% ers.

This will be the straw that breaks many retiree's back. You bust your ass and do the right thing,and,this is what you get a smash in the head for doing every thing according to Hoyle.

[Bluenorthwest]

3. The Senatorial slight of hand at work, big speeches about Citibank and no mention of Pensions

I note that Warren did not even say the word 'Pension' when fighting this bill. I still can't get over that.

[RoccoR5955]

4. If they do this.

They will have to answer to it. Take money from people for their retirement, then when they lose it in the Wall St. casino, after they promised it to people is so unethical. When they write laws to protect their rich asses, the people will get to a point where they will rise up against them.

[imthevicar]

5. And I was

Supposed to be excited about voting Democratic!? To Hell with the Party! YOU G.D. WHORES! YOU DO FOR THE EFIN BANKS, WALL STREET AND ANY ONE WITH CASH, BUT AT OUR EXPENSE. TO HELL WITH THIS, IT'S TIME FOR A REBOOT.

[drynberg]

6. OK, what's a reboot look like?

[midnight]

7. Another example of wage theft.

"In the late ’90s I noticed that many companies, including a lot of the largest companies in the country, were hiring experts to change their pension plans. They all claimed they were doing it to make themselves more modern and better for the mobile workforce, but it struck me as unlikely that a lot of companies would be doing something that was apparently costing them money just to make employees happy. I ultimately figured out that they had found a way to use the accounting rules to profit from cutting benefits."



http://www.salon.com/2011/09/17/retirement_heist_interview/