This is one of Wall Street’s dirtiest, best-guarded secrets… but nobody ever talks about it outside the mahogany-lined hallways of their innermost sanctums.
They’re the real reason why your local school district is cutting its budget, why there’s never enough money to maintain our country’s infrastructure, why healthcare costs so much, and why you’re hit with one levy after another, year after year, to cover government “shortfalls.”
The pension crisis is also the single BIGGEST risk to the world’s stock markets today and, yes, to your wealth.
Rolling Stone calls this… a scam of almost unmatchable cruelty.
Forbes says it’s a… “national crisis” of unprecedented proportions.
Bloomberg says… the writing appears to be on the wall.
I know I’m going out on a limb.
Things appear good. The economy is stronger than it’s been in decades. Unemployment is near 50-year lows. Wages are expanding. Spending is up. Earnings are excellent.
What I have to say will be hard to believe.
But, here it goes…
U.S. pension assets were $25.17 trillion at the end of 2017.
That’s a huge number.
So large, in fact, that many people can’t wrap their heads around it.
But let’s try anyway. That’s double the shadow-banking system that brought this country to its knees in 2008, when securitized sub-prime mortgages blew up. And that’s 9x the amount of capital that cratered Lehman Brothers.
Most folks are surprised to learn, however, that this is a double-edged sword…
… America’s pensions owe retirees $6 trillion more than they can pay.
Put plainly, they don’t have enough money. So they’re breaking promises they made to retirees by cutting their income substantially. In some cases, by 90% or more.
(By Keith Fitz-Gerald is the editor of Total Wealth and Chief Investment Strategist for Money Morning since 2007 – Source: Investing Pros.com)
