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Institutional lenders are in the risk management business. If they are seriously harmed by a realistic proportion of debtors defaulting, it's because they shou

Institutional lenders are in the risk management business. If they are seriously harmed by a realistic proportion of debtors defaulting, it's because they should have known better than to write those loans. Are we really going to say that to sick and elderly people being thrown out of hospitals, evicted from their homes, and cut off from food and medicine? To their adult children who must now destroy their household finances to meet the government's obligations in its stead, or carry the guilt of letting mom and dad die of treatable conditions in a shithole? >controlled restructuring of everyone's expectations This euphemism seems appropriate when applied to banks and businesses for whom counterparty risk is a cost of doing business. For individuals who gave their entire adult lives to an institution in exchange for security in retirement, it seems tone-deaf. Maybe taxpayers need to bite the bullet and pay what it costs to run the services they're benefitting from.

rubber_duck 11y ago
>For individuals who gave their entire adult lives to an institution in exchange for security in retirement, it seems tone-deaf. When you put it like that it sounds like they had zero responsibility for the situation. It's usually populist policies that are democratically elected that lead to this situation in the first place - it's interesting how politicians always get the blame but the people who voted/campaigned/supported them because it was in their direct interest at the time aren't even considered. Reality is a lot of pension systems around the world are unsustainable and built on the assumption that population and economy will continue to grow. Even the mandatory "private" pension funds in my country (Eastern Europe) mostly buy government bonds and that ends up being spent by the government. And nobody is even talking about reducing government spending or getting a sustainable budged they are just worried their privileges don't get touched and throw around nonsensical demagoguery to rationalize their views. I find it hard to be sympathetic with people that cause this kinds of problems in the first place and impose it on others trough democratic process.
- superuser2 11y ago
  > When you put it like that it sounds like they had zero responsibility for the situation. We have no evidence that government workers voted to defund their own pensions - presumably that was everyone else.
  - iofj 11y ago
    I don't get that such a thing is even possible. Those workers were offered compensation, including future compensation, in trade for work now. Why does the state get to annul the future compensation once the work is done ? Even weirder: why do libertarians here seem to be in favor of the state doing so ? You'd think breaking contracts would be a huge no-no for them.

rubber_duck 11y ago

>For individuals who gave their entire adult lives to an institution in exchange for security in retirement, it seems tone-deaf. When you put it like that it sounds like they had zero responsibility for the situation. It's usually populist policies that are democratically elected that lead to this situation in the first place - it's interesting how politicians always get the blame but the people who voted/campaigned/supported them because it was in their direct interest at the time aren't even considered. Reality is a lot of pension systems around the world are unsustainable and built on the assumption that population and economy will continue to grow. Even the mandatory "private" pension funds in my country (Eastern Europe) mostly buy government bonds and that ends up being spent by the government. And nobody is even talking about reducing government spending or getting a sustainable budged they are just worried their privileges don't get touched and throw around nonsensical demagoguery to rationalize their views. I find it hard to be sympathetic with people that cause this kinds of problems in the first place and impose it on others trough democratic process.

superuser2 11y ago
> When you put it like that it sounds like they had zero responsibility for the situation. We have no evidence that government workers voted to defund their own pensions - presumably that was everyone else.
- iofj 11y ago
  I don't get that such a thing is even possible. Those workers were offered compensation, including future compensation, in trade for work now. Why does the state get to annul the future compensation once the work is done ? Even weirder: why do libertarians here seem to be in favor of the state doing so ? You'd think breaking contracts would be a huge no-no for them.