Posted on 06/12/2011 6:17:44 AM PDT by blam
Ireland Seizes $7 Billion From Its Pension Fund To Boost Employment
Hugh O'Connell, thejournal.ie
Jun. 12, 2011, 7:57 AM
THE GOVERNMENT WILL use the last €5 billion in the National Pensions Reserve Fund (NPRF) to help create employment although it will need approval from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Europe before doing so.
The Sunday Times reports today that the money will be used by the government to create as many as 80,000 jobs in Ireland. The paper cites government sources in reporting that the use of the money would be seen as more viable then the proposed sale of semi-state assets in the current weak market.
One source says that the view of the troika of IMF, the European Union and the European Central Bank is that if you have money it should be spent rather than drawing on outside funding or money from selling off assets at the wrong-time.
The NPRF was launched ten-years-ago by the then Minister for Finance Charlie McCreevy.
Its purpose was to build up assets which would part-finance the cost to the exchequer of social welfare and public service pensions from 2025 onward.
A total of €17.5 billion of it is being used as part of the €85 billion EU/IMF bailout that was agreed last November
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
"An Investment In The Future Of The Country"
Coming your way:(Future Obama speech?)
"The government has allowed some fortunate individuals to set-aside money in tax exempt accounts....in out times of trouble, it is time for those fortunate few to share their (government allowed) good fortune with a suffering nation. I have instructed members of my economic team to.....
Yup..the pilfering will begin here. Been telling people that this is the next move by gubmints.
“That could never happen here.”
/sarc
SNORT.
Wait for the Krugman bloviation pointing to this as the example the US should follow.
I guess that is what (.)bama was doing during his visit to Ireland, getting ideas he could import back here and recast them as his own.
One thing that has bothered me about his recent shift in rhetoric is his noting that business must begin partnering with government to promote employment, that is, hire people they don’t need as they see no growth in the US. I recall a tax that was enacted in the 30’s which Roosevelt put on businesses with “undistributed profits” which meant they were not distributed to stockholders so they stockholders could pay taxes at the higher surcharge levels in effect on the “fortunate” at that time. It is not a long reach to see him proposing a tax on the cash held by businesses above some preconceived idea of how much money they need to operate. At last estimate there was 2T in cash and securities on the books of US businesses, in the eyes of the socialist (.)bama, a fair tax would be 75% of that cash to go the G to create goverment jobs IMO. Watch for this coming to one of his proposals soon.
There is no consideration given in these socialist “utopias” to tax cuts or less govt spending.
They are doomed.
However once the wall was breeched and politicians learned that they could raid this trust fund with relative impunity by stuffing the box with IOUs, it became a re-election and constituent service dream. After all, the politician only had to worry about his electoral career and the bill wouldn't become due until long after he was gone. They even admitted it while they were doing it, but so long as they kept the goodies flowing, hey who cares.
I remember the 2000 election cycle when Vice President Al Gore stood there with a straight face and absolutely LIED about the safety of the Social Security Trust Fund and it's "Locked Box". It was almost as good as when he was in the Rose Garden defending Bill Clinton's morality.
So the difference between our past and this Irish present does not surprise me. Now, given the proclivities of America's "Native Criminals" (Mark Twain), with our systems in such dire straights, is it inconceivable that their eyes turn to our PRIVATE INVESTMENTs next. Sadly, no, since to so very many of them, including our President, there is no such thing as private wealth nor sanctity of contract nor supremacy of Constitutional Law.
AARRGGHHHH! Insufficient coffee in blood stream - correct to "with our systems in such dire straits," please!
On my first cup-didn’t even notice it...
The Mrs
-former Proofreader..zzzzzz
BHO’s greatest sin as president is what he has done to contract law.
And very few people even noticed.
I am losing hope.
Will Big Business owners and corporate CEO’s grow a spine and stand up to Barky’s “invitations” to be govt-controlled?
The tax enacted under Roosevelt last for almost 40 years so I guess they will not have a choice. This is gangster government fine tuned.
Thank God we at least have some control of the house or we would have been down the financial tubes by now albeit the house is kicking and screaming as the rest of the establishment government is dragging them down the rat hole.
The brilliant and glum Jim Manzi has pointed out that millions of Americans are depending on promises that cannot possibly be kept, by Social Security, Medicare and government pension schemes. Even private pension schemes that are funded on an “actuarially sound” basis are at risk.
The reason is simple: the resources to meet these promises simply do not exist. No taxation scheme, redistribution scheme, belt tightening scheme or any other scheme is going to make them exist.
Think of a situation where the human race no longer procreated, say because of a wide spread epidemic that wipes out our ability to reproduce. You could save as much money as you wanted, you could hoard bars of gold or bags of diamonds or stacks of hundred dollar bills, but for the last remaining aging humans, there would be no one to care for them in their last years, no one to bury the dead, no one to grow crops, drill oil, man firehouses. Humanity would end in a bleak barren landscape of a decaying civilization.
While our current plight is nowhere nearly that grim, the analogy holds, at the margins. We have many more claimants on future productivity than there is any prospect of satisfying. Forget money or dollars or inflation. What will not exist are enough people who will be productive enough to fulfill these promises, barring unprecedented increases in productivity. The current administration’s anti-energy, anti-business tendencies bespeak a deep luddite streak in the body politic of the republic (and the larger world) that make such miracles seem even more unlikely.
Sadly, you are correct.
How exactly could the government save 34.8 trillion dollars, without destroying the world economy?
And how could they then spend it, without destroying the world economy?
It was not possible from the start - payroll taxes have been a lie from the start, and are really just another income tax.
Fraud by government.
Instead of putting Madhoff in jail, they should have made him Secretary of the Treasury. At least his lies were convincing.
Can't risk derailing the gravy train now can we?
Ireland should have just seized 5 billion from U2 Bono’s accounts. Read where he is transferring his junk to a better tax country. What a fraud.
We’re already doing this.
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