Thanx for the post Luke :) though no thanx for the bad news ;)

Not so new however here in Germany - they finally cannot hide the truth anymore that pensions based on the 'generational contract' can no longer be paid from pension funds paid by the next generation. So they're implementing one new law crazier than the next: from mandatory additional private pension insurance (private Altersvorsorge), to forcing business owners and freelancers to pay into state pension funds which are already bankrupt (Bürgerversicherung), to demanding nursing home bills and social security (when pension value is lower than living cost) be paid by solvent children.

They even managed to top this by courts appointing custodians (usually a private citizen or doctor at the courts discretion) who can put my mother into an expensive nursery home that I have to pay for, even though she prefers to stay in the house and garden my brother and I provided for her. She barely managed to get out of such 'custodianship' once (jumped out of the ambulace that was supposed to take her for some tests) - I sure hope it will stay that way. So better make sure your parents sign a living will (Betreuungsverfügung) that would make you their custodians or you're not only out of an inheritance, they will also clean you out with idiotic nursing home bills and other custodial directives, like private care at home by the custodian himself at ridiculous hourly rates.

How's that for a new cash-cow ;) they are not only funneling new money into bankrupt state-coffers, they also make the cows turn on each other before they turn on the state ... 20th Century Motor Company all over again ...

Of course I've already made emergency plans with my brother: if they do catch my mother unawares again we'll bust her out of the nursing home or custodianship in the middle of the night and hide her away on a lonely island where she can continue puttering around in her garden :D

(Edited by Vera S. Doerr on 4/26, 1:55pm)

That is just beyond depravity.  Thanks for the article Luke.  Up here in Canada I can see the same writing on the walls.

Our very own Ms Nahles topped even that one:

After long protests and struggles to push retirement to f65/m67 she had a new little gift for the latest elections: retirement at 63 with full benefits if you were employed for 40 years - and - wait for it: which includes times when you were unemployed but were entitled to unemployment benefits (usually about 2 years, starting over when you worked a few years). So basically you can draw unemployment at 61 move seamlessly into retirement at 63 and worked about 25 years if you planned your unemployment right between employers.

Of course our trustworthy politician promised new edicts that would "make it more expensive for companies to go this road so it would become unattractive to do so"

Please note the irony, that it will be expensive for companies, not for the poor overworked masses she is shepherding into a cushy sunset which they deserve after a lifetime of toil and struggle, not to mention raise the kids.

one exemplary comment from a newspaper when a slew of Elternunterhalt verdicts hit the news - roughly translated from German:

"but you can see this in a positive light. If, god forbid, I'm getting old and, god forbid, I'm completely at odds with my kids, then I'm looking for a really expensive nursing home and f... them over real good ...."

Guess we know the answer to that: Soylent Green will have a real sweet taste :P

Hahaaha good one Steve!

A subtle fact about Obamacare/ACA:  all those folks who think they are getting a 'subsidy' are really just bleeding their estates down; the government imposes a 'clawback' on the estate of those who accept the 'subsidy' upon their passing.   It is one reasone why the IRS is front and center in the lives of those accepting the 'subsidy.'

I'm not saing that shouldn't be done; where else should such mandated expenses come from?    It's just that few? none? of the folks who are ecstatic about their 'subsidy' realize what they are incurring.   They think they are being 'subsidized.'

If they understood this, Obamacare/ACA would be even a bigger albotross around their neck.    This kind of dishonesty is a key part of their swill, an absolute necessity.   They are shameless.

regards,

Fred

Steve:

Growth for the quarter at 0.1%, but DOW up at 16,580 today.     Said with a straight face.

All that funny money got to go somewhere; inflation is showing up as grossly inflated stock prices.    At most, companies are valued these days by how much value-less cash they are sitting on ... which gets reflected back as high stock valuations ... in units of worthless dollars that can't find enough actual value to chase in these flat on their backs economies.   Zeros chasing zeros.  There is little real circulation of actual value (as opposed to value-proxy 'valuations') going on in these economies.

Pump handles are not being pulled by human hands and minds and creative effort.    Valueless water is being poured into the pipes, at most, some few turbines might run only downhill, the rest sloshes out of the value circulation pipes and into the parallel equities marketplace to seek a balance of zeros and zeros, now fully disconnected from the humna effort pumps and turbines economies, where value is created to seek value.

Nope.   It's increasingly the churning of disconnected value-proxies these days, providing 'signals' connected to ... nothing.

These economic masters of the universe have failed in plain sight.  Reduced to blaming  all the snow now.  These are some fragile modern economies.   We must all labor out in the fields these days, relative to 50 years ago.

What is truly amazing is, how long inertia holds up a dead carcass.

regards,

Fred