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Is it really a sacrifice if you promise yourself something impossible and then fail to make good on it?
by anonymoushn 13y ago
Is it really a sacrifice if you promise yourself something impossible and then fail to make good on it?
- fnordfnordfnord 13y agoIt's not as though they let the garbage man write his own pension. It's funny, when a bank NINJA-loans a half-million dollars for a 1000ft^2 bungalow, it's always the-purchaser-took-advantage-of-the-bank, and never, the-bank-should-have-known-better-and-deserves-to-go-broke.
- anonymoushn 13y agoNo, certainly the garbage man doesn't write down his own pension. His union negotiates with the government over how much money (that doesn't belong to either of them at the time) to promise to all garbage men. Banks deserve to be exposed to the risk they assume in general, but this issue has problems in addition to the problem of banks being sheltered from risk.
- tptacek 13y agoThe banks are presumably going to take a huge bath on bonds they bought from Detroit.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y agoIf they do, it's only because Detroit literally has nothing of value left that can be taken.
- tptacek 13y ago"If they do"? Help me understand the word "if" there?
- fnordfnordfnord 13y agoIf, as in if the Federal Gov't doesn't bail them out.
- wpietri 13y agoIs there reason to think that banks are major unhedged bondholders who will actually take losses?
- TheCondor 13y agoI'd expect Detroit pension funds to be the bigger bond holders of Detroit bonds... No bank of note will have much exposure, the banks aren't stupid. Any one know what kinds of perks Michigan as for state munis? In colorado you get a tax break on them.
- wpietri 13y agoOh, please. These pensions are impossible now, but that's because of decades of underinvestment and out-of-control health care costs. Also, the workers didn't promise themselves anything. They made a deal with their employers. The employers didn't have to agree to anything. They did, and those deals should be honored.
- anonymoushn 13y agoThere's little to no adversarial aspect in a negotiation between government employees over the size of government employee pensions.
- penguindev 13y agoYep, especially when the unborn who are footing the generational robbery don't vote.
- wpietri 13y agoDo you have any evidence for that? The employees getting the pensions are not the same ones doing the negotiating. By your theory, government employees would always get what they wanted and therefore never strike, but that's demonstrably not the ase.