The Queen's speech - the slippery slope to fascism

The slippery slope to fascism – soon to come to a village near you

Fracking on private land to be permitted in Queen’s speech – leak

An infrastructure and competitiveness bill to be announced in the Queen’s speech on Wednesday will change trespassing laws, allowing shale gas exploration firms to drill on private land without requiring the permission of the owner, UK media report.

RT,

1 June, 2014

The Queens speech marks the formal start of the parliamentary year and sets the proposed government agenda for the session, which will run from June 4.

On Sunday, British media started leaking the contents of this year's address, its topics varying from fracking to a “radical shake-up of workplace pensions.”

Fracking

The fracking bill will allow companies to drill on private property without asking permission through reform of trespassing laws, according to ITV.

Shale gas extraction is not really popular with affected communities. Manchester saw hundreds rally in March demanding to ban the practice. Environmental activists are strongly opposed to the technique, which has already been proven to cause small earthquakes in the US. A number of studies have alsorevealed water pollution, and the practice has also been linked to health problems, including birth defects in unborn infants in the US.

Sara Firth @SaraFirth_RT

Follow

[PHOTO 1] #Manchester Not for #Shale. Anti #fracking protest 09/03/14

9:34 AM - 10 Mar 2014

6 RETWEETS 2 FAVORITES

Sara Firth @SaraFirth_RT

Follow

[PHOTO 7] #Salford Says... Anti #fracking demo #Manchester 09/03/14

9:49 AM - 10 Mar 2014

5 RETWEETS 1 FAVORITE

Green Party leader Natalie Bennett stated that the Government was ‘focusing on the fantasy of fracking.’

“We're obviously opposed to that because we're opposed to the whole idea of fracking. I think it's really a demonstration of how this Government - which we might recall once claimed to be the greenest Government ever, which is now a very sad, sick joke,” Bennett Told Sky News' Murnaghan program after hearing the news.

A leading fracking company has previously made statements saying that the industry will be completely crushed in the UK if government doesn’t allow it to drill under people’s private property without their permission. 



Cuadrilla chief executive Francis Egan told The Times it would be ‘impractical’ to negotiate with every individual landowner.

Pensions

Alongside fracking, other issues to be addressed include terror policies, excessive pay of NHS executives and the implantation of controversial Dutch-style ‘collective pensions’. 



The pension scheme is supposedly less vulnerable to fluctuations in the stock market. Payment goes into a collective mega-fund. 



Pensions minister Steve Webb has told the Sunday Telegraph that such schemes are “some of the best in the world” and that they give “people greater certainty and probably better value.” 



Administration Costs are cited to be lower because of the collective nature – therefore pension income will be higher, according to its proponents.ature – therefore pension income will be higher, according to its proponents.

Reuters / Luke MacGregor

However, critics state that any returns won’t be guaranteed. If the ‘collective fund’ investments don’t generate the profits anticipated by investors, then pensions could fall, Altmann stated. 



“If markets don't perform or life expectancy rises by more than expected, then it might be necessary to cut pension incomes,” she said. 



Under a process known as ‘smoothing’, this risk may be alleviated by profits from good investment years being distributed in years of negative return. 



However, there is a certain degree of loss of personal control for each personal investor, which has proved controversial in the Netherlands.

'Revolving door' public sector redundancies

Highly paid civil servants and NHS management or executives and quango bosses will not receive massive redundancy packages before they resume similar employment before the end of the year. 



If they leave a job with a high redundancy payoff, they will not be able to return to a similar level/position within a matter of months – thereby stamping out costly ‘revolving door’ policies. 



“We must end the revolving door where highly paid public sector workers can leave with redundancy, only to rejoin a short while later,” Nicky Morgan, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury told the Telegraph. 



Some 17 percent of the 19,000 redundancies in 2010-2013 were rehired; 13 percent were reemployed with the NHS.

Reuters / Suzanne Plunkett

Terrorism

The Queen will also be notifying the British public of a crackdown on terror. Some 400 extremists who have traveled to Syria are thought to have some terrorist links. 



Only terror-activities plotted for the UK can be prosecuted, which means that British nationals who use a foreign base to plot attacks can escape prosecution. 



“People who prepare and train for terrorist activities should be in no doubt of the action we are prepared to take to protect our national security, including prosecuting those who break the law,” an anonymous government source told the Daily Mail. 



“Our message is clear – the UK advises against all travel to Syria. Anyone who does travel, for whatever reason, is putting themselves in considerable danger,” the source said.

Looting the pension scheme

Poland Confiscates Half Of Private Pension Funds To "Cut" Sovereign Debt Load

 Zero Hedge,

6 September, 2013

While the world was glued to the developments in the Mediterranean in the past week, Poland took a page straight out of Rahm Emanuel's playbook and in order to not let a crisis go to waste, announced quietly that it would transfer to the state - i.e., confiscate - the bulk of assets owned by the country's private pension funds (many of them owned by such foreign firms as PIMCO parent Allianz, AXA, Generali, ING and Aviva), without offering any compensation. In effect, the state just nationalized roughly half of the private sector pension fund assets, although it had a more politically correct name for it: pension overhaul.

By way of background, Poland has a hybrid pension system: as Reuters explains, mandatory contributions are made into both the state pension vehicle, known as ZUS, and the private funds, which are collectively known by the Polish acronym OFE. Bonds make up roughly half the private funds' portfolios, with the rest company stocks.

And while a change to state-pension funds was long awaited - an overhaul if you will - nobody expected that this would entail a literal pillage of private sector assets.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said private funds within the state-guaranteed system would have their bond holdings transferred to a state pension vehicle, but keep their equity holdings. The funds would effectively be left with only the equities portions of their assets, even this would be depleted, and there will be uncertainty about the number of new savers joining.

But why is Poland engaging in behavior that will ultimately be disastrous to future capital allocation in non-public pension funds (the type that can at least on paper generate some returns as opposed to "public" funds which are guaranteed to lose)? After all, this is a last ditch step which no rational person would engage in unless there were no other option. Simple: there were no other option, and the driver is the same reason the world everywhere else is broke too - too much debt.

By shifting some assets from the private funds into ZUS, the government can book those assets on the state balance sheet to offset public debt, giving it more scope to borrow and spend. Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski said the changes will reduce public debt by about eight percent of GDP. This in turn, he said, would allow the lowering of two thresholds that deter the government from allowing debt to raise over 50 percent, and then 55 percent, of GDP. Public debt last year stood at 52.7 percent of GDP, according to the government's own calculations.

To summarize:

• Government has too much debt to issue more debt
• Government nationalizes private pension funds making their debt holdings an "asset" and commingles with other public assets
• New confiscated assets net out sovereign debt liability, lowering the debt/GDP ratio
• Debt/GDP drops below threshold, government can issue more sovereign debt

And of course, once Poland borrows like a drunken sailor using the new window of opportunity, and maxes out its new and improved limits, it will have no choice but to confiscate more assets, and to make its balance sheet appear better, until one day, there is nothing left in the private sector to confiscate. At that point the limit itself will have to be legislated away, and Poland will simply continue borrowing until one day there are no foreign lenders willing to take the same risk as the nation's private pensioners. At that point, Poland, which is in the EU but still has the Zloty, can just go ahead and monetize its own debt by printing unlimited amounts of its currency.

Of course, we all know how that story ends.

The response to the confiscation was, naturally, one of shock:

The reform is "a decimation of the ...(private pension fund) system to open up fiscal space for an easier life now for the government," said Peter Attard Montalto of Nomura. "The government has an odd definition of private property given it claims this is not nationalisation."

"This is worse than many on the markets had feared," a manager at one of the leading pension funds, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters.

"The devil is in the detail and we don't yet know a lot about the mechanism of these changes, what benchmarks will be use to evaluate our performance... (It) looks like pension funds will lose a lot of flexibility in what they can invest."

Catastrophic consequences for fund flows aside, the Polish prime minister had a prompt canned response:

Tusk said people joining the pension system in the future would not be obliged to pay into the private part of the system. Depending on the finer points, this could mean still fewer assets in the private funds.

"The (current) system has turned out to be built in part on rising public debt and turned out to be a very costly system," Tusk told a news conference.

"We believe that, apart from the positive consequence of this decision for public debt, pensions will also be safer."

You see, he is from the government, and he is confiscating the pensions to make them safer. Confiscation is Safety and all that...

Polish officials have tried to reassure investors, saying the overhaul avoids the more radical options of taking both bond and equity assets away from the private funds outright.

They say the old system effectively made Polish public debt appear higher than it really is.

Well, once you nationalize private assets, the public debt will lindeed appear lower than it was before confiscation: we give them that much.

End result: "The Polish pension funds' organisation said the changes may be unconstitutional because the government is taking private assets away from them without offering any compensation.... This may lead to the private pension systems shutting down," said Rafal Benecki of ING Bank Slaski."

Unconstitutional? What's that. But whatever it is, it's ok - after all the public pension system is still around. At least until that too is plundered. But in the meantime, all such pensions will be "safer", guaranteed.

But best of all, in the aftermath of Cyprus, we now know what the two most recent European blueprints for preserving the myth of solvency are: bail-ins, which confiscate deposits, and pension fund "overhauls", which confiscate, well, pension funds.

And now, back to the global recovery soap opera.

Japanese demographics

Japan's Deputy Prime Minister Has A Modest Proposal For The Elderly: "Hurry Up And Die"

Zero Hedge,
21 January, 2013



Everyone knows that Japan, whose population is now at the oldest average age it has ever been in its history, sold more adult than baby diapers for the first time in 2012, and is "older" than any nation in the world, has a "demographic problem." What few may know, however, is that it also has a secret plan to fix said "demographic problem" - a solution that would make Hitler, Goebbels and Stalin proud. Earlier today, Taro Aso, 72 years young, and the deputy PM of the man set to unleash Abenomics on Japan (for the second time, only this time it will be different), suggested that the elderly in Japan should just "hurry up and die" because "You cannot sleep well when you think it's all paid by the government."


Uhhhmmm....


Remember that this is the nation that the US is set to imitate at all costs: in everything from the rising debt/GDP, to the interest as a % of revenue, to the demographic distribution of the population, to the absolute collapse in its export base, to, well, everything. And, perhaps, one day to the treatment of the elderly. Because unlike the US, Japan does not have an insolvent Social Security Fund and underfunded liabilities that amount to about 10 times its GDP. Ironically, in the perspective of benefits promised to its society, Japan is in a better place than even the US. But why worry about that now: there is an inauguration going on, and everyone is discussing what the FLOTUS is wearing.
But back to outspoken Aso. From the SCMP:

The 72-year-old Aso, who has a reputation for speaking insensitively, was addressing a meeting on social security issues on the burden imposed by prolonging patients' lives with treatment.

 

Describing patients with serious illnesses as "tube persons", Aso said they should be allowed to die quickly if they wanted to, Kyodo News reported.

 

"Heaven forbid I should be kept alive if I want to die. You cannot sleep well when you think it's all paid by the government. This won't be solved unless you let them hurry up and die."

 

He later retracted some of his remarks and admitted it had been inappropriate to make such comments in public. They were his personal opinion, not government policy, he said.

 

Aso became something of a figure of fun during his brief stint as prime minister in 2009, during which he told a group of university students that young people should not get married because they are too poor and, because they don't earn much money, they are not worthy of respect from a life partner.

 

That insight was followed by a declaration that followers of the world's religions should learn from Japan's work ethic.

 

"Our values in Japan regard work as important. To work is good. That is a completely different way of thinking to the Old Testament. We should share that philosophy with other nations."

 

Aso has a reputation for not always thinking through his public comments. He had offended doctors by saying many of them "lack common sense"; the Democratic Party of Japan for comparing it with the Nazi Party; people with Alzheimer's disease and also China, which he described as "a significant threat".

And these are the - somewhat aged to be perfectly blunt here as well - people on which the western capital markets have staked their hopes for a return to prosperity and monetary utopia? Just when does the world admit to itself it has a peak desperation problem?

Germany

Germany prepares for austerity

Recommendations by the German Finance Ministry point to a drastic increase in taxes and a cut in social services, an analysis says.

UPI,

25 December, 2012

Although the government and the opposition in 2013's elections are pledging higher benefits for pensioners, families and the long-term unemployed, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble is planning cutbacks to prepare for a weakening economy, the German magazine Der Spiegel reported Tuesday.

The European debt crisis is prompting the planning of an austerity budget, and finance officials are scrutinizing subsidies, entitlements and other welfare benefits worth tens of billions of euros, the magazine said.

Schauble's team envisions encouraging Germans to work past the official retirement age of 67 to counter a labor shortage, and intends making retirement less attractive by removing "inappropriate incentives" -- the advisers wrote in a position paper -- by reducing pension payments

Germany 'exporting' old and sick to foreign care homes

Pensioners are being sent to care homes in eastern Europe and Asia in an austerity move dismissed as 'inhumane deportation'

German pensioners in Berlin. Many elderly Germans are increasingly being sent to cheaper retirement and long-term care accommodation in eastern Europe and Asia. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

the Guardian,

26 December, 2012

Growing numbers of elderly and sick Germans are being sent overseas for long-term care in retirement and rehabilitation centres because of rising costs and falling standards in Germany.

The move, which has seen thousands of retired Germans rehoused in homes in eastern Europe and Asia, has been severely criticised by social welfare organisations who have called it "inhumane deportation".

But with increasing numbers of Germans unable to afford the growing costs of retirement homes, and an ageing and shrinking population, the number expected to be sent abroad in the next few years is only likely to rise. Experts describe it as a "time bomb".

Germany's chronic care crisis – the care industry suffers from lack of workers and soaring costs – has for years been mitigated by eastern Europeans migrating to Germany in growing numbers to care for the country's elderly.

But the transfer of old people to eastern Europe is being seen as a new and desperate departure, indicating that even with imported, cheaper workers, the system is unworkable.

Germany has one of the fastest-ageing populations in the world, and the movement here has implications for other western countries, including Britain, particularly amid fears that austerity measures and rising care costs are potentially undermining standards of residential care.

The Sozialverband Deutschland (VdK), a German socio-political advisory group, said the fact that growing numbers of Germans were unable to afford the costs of a retirement home in their own country sent a huge "alarm signal". It has called for political intervention.

"We simply cannot let those people who built Germany up to be what it is, who put their backbones into it all their lives, be deported," said VdK's president, Ulrike Mascher. "It is inhumane."

Researchers found an estimated 7,146 German pensioners living in retirement homes in Hungary in 2011. More than 3,000 had been sent to homes in the Czech Republic, and there were more than 600 in Slovakia. There are also unknown numbers in Spain, Greece and Ukraine. Thailand and the Philippines are also attracting increasing numbers.

The Guardian spoke to retired Germans and people needing long-term care living in homes in Hungary, Thailand and Greece, some of whom said that they were there out of choice, because the costs were lower – on average between a third and two-thirds of the price in Germany – and because of what they perceived as better standards of care.

But others were evidently there reluctantly.

The Guardian also found a variety of healthcare providers were in the process of building or just about to open homes overseas dedicated to the care of elderly Germans in what is clearly perceived in the industry to be a growing and highly profitable market.

According to Germany's federal bureau of statistics, more than 400,000 senior citizens are currently unable to afford a German retirement home, a figure that is growing by around 5% a year.

The reasons are rising care home costs – which average between €2,900 and €3,400 (£2,700) a month, stagnating pensions, and the fact that people are more likely to need care as they get older.

As a result, the Krankenkassen or statutory insurers that make up Germany's state insurance system are openly discussing how to make care in foreign retirement homes into a long-term workable financial model.

In Asia, and eastern and southern Europe, care workers' pay and other expenses such as laundry, maintenance and not least land and building costs, are often much lower.

Today, European Union law prevents state insurers from signing contracts directly with overseas homes, but that is likely to change as legislators are forced to find ways to respond to Europe's ageing population.

The lack of legislation has not stopped retired people or their families from opting for foreign homes if their pensions could cover the costs.

But critics of the move have voiced particular worries about patients with dementia, amid concern that they are being sent abroad on the basis that they will not know the difference.

Sabine Jansen, head of Germany's Alzheimer Society, said that surroundings and language were often of paramount importance to those with dementia looking to cling to their identity.

"In particular, people with dementia can find it difficult to orientate themselves in a wholly other culture with a completely different language, because they're very much living in an old world consisting of their earlier memories," she said.

With Germany's population expected to shrink from almost 82 million to about 69 million by 2050, one in every 15 – about 4.7 million people – are expected to be in need of care, meaning the problem of provision is only likely to worsen.

Willi Zylajew, an MP with the conservative Christian Democrats and a care service specialist, said it would be increasingly necessary to consider foreign care.

"Considering the imminent crisis, it would be judicious to at least start thinking about alternative forms of care for the elderly," he said.

Christel Bienstein, a nursing scientist from the University of Witten/Herdecke, said many German care homes had reached breaking point due to lack of staff, and that care standards had dropped as a result.

"On average each patient is given only around 53 minutes of individual care every day, including feeding them," she said. "Often there are 40 to 60 residents being looked after by just one carer."

Artur Frank, the owner of Senior Palace, which finds care homes for Germans in Slovakia, said that was why it was wrong to suggest senior citizens were being "deported" abroad, as the VdK described it.

"They are not being deported or expelled," he said. "Many are here of their own free will, and these are the results of sensible decisions by their families who know they will be better off."

He said he had seen "plenty of examples of bad care" in German homes among the 50 pensioners for whom he had already found homes in Slovakia.

"There was one woman who had hardly been given anything to eat or drink, and in Slovakia they had to teach her how to swallow again," he said.

German politicians have shied away from dealing with the subject, largely due to fears of a voter backlash if Germany's state insurers are seen to be financing care workers abroad to the detriment of the domestic care industry.

UK pensions

"“For all our UK readers, who hope some day to collect pension benefits, we have two messages: i) our condolences, and ii) you won't.”

The UK's Most Disturbing Number: Total Unfunded Pension Obligations = 321% Of GDP

Zero Hedge,

12 November, 2012

For all our UK readers, who hope some day to collect pension benefits, we have two messages: i) our condolences, and ii) you won't.   Why? The answer comes straight from the ONS:

The new supplementary table published by ONS in Levy (2012)10 includes the following headline figures for Government pension obligations as at end December 2010:

• Social security pension schemes (i.e. unfunded state pension scheme obligations): £3.843 trillion, being 263 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) (£3.497 trillion at end of December 2009)

• Centrally – administered unfunded pension schemes for public sector employees (i.e. unfunded public service pension scheme obligations): £852 billion, being 58 per cent of GDP (£915 billion at end of December 2009)

• Funded DB pension schemes for which government is responsible: £313 billion, being 21 per cent of GDP (£332 billion at end of December 2009).

In summary, the estimates in the new supplementary table indicate a total Government pension obligation, at the end of December 2010, of £5.01 trillion, or 342 per cent of GDP, of which around £4.7 trillion relates to unfunded obligations.

Or visually:

Of course, US-based readers should not get their hopes up too much either. With total underfunded liabilities - including SSN and healthcare, in the US well over $100 trillion (on under $16 trillion of GDP) it is only a matter of time before the entire welfare state ponzi scheme blows up.

The worsening NZ economy

NZ farmer sentiment worsens on softer prices, currency - survey

New Zealand farmer sentiment deteriorated to its lowest level in more than three years in September as softer commodity prices and a high currency weighed, a survey showed on Tuesday.

Reuters,

15 October, 2012

The Rabobank survey of around 450 farmers showed a net 29 percent of respondents believed the rural economy will worsen over the next 12 months, compared with a net 25 percent optimism level in the June survey.

It was the fifth consecutive quarterly fall in sentiment in the agriculture sector, with farmers also turning negative about their own outlook.

"Farmers' expectations of their own farm business performance had previously held up better than confidence in the agricultural economy as a whole, however this measure has also now showed some deterioration," said Rabobank General Manager Ben Russell.

"Overseas market conditions and rising input costs were also shown to be a concern."

Agriculture accounts for around half of New Zealand's NZ$48 billion ($39 billion) annual export earnings.

The trade-weighted New Zealand dollar has gained more than 5 percent so far this year.

Sheep and beef farmers were the most pessimistic of those surveyed as meat prices remained soft, while confidence in the dairy sector, New Zealand's biggest export earner, was generally flat.

"The 15 per cent lift in global dairy commodity prices we've seen since they troughed in July is likely to have curbed some dairy farmer pessimism," Russell said.

The world's biggest dairy exporter, New Zealand-based Fonterra, has lowered its forecast payout for the current season to NZ$5.65-NZ$5.75 kilo of milk solids.

The survey also showed farmers trimming their investment intentions with 84 percent expecting to maintain or increase spending from 89 percent in the last survey. ($1=NZ$1.23)

Service sector contracting

The service sector has contracted for the first time in more than two years - a further sign that economic growth is slowing in the second half of the year.

Radio NZ,

15 October, 2012

The BusinessNZ Performances of Services Index, which comprises more than two thirds of the economy, slid a fraction of a point to 49.6 from August's seasonally-adjusted reading of 50.

A reading below 50 indicates that the sector is shrinking. The sector comprises almost 70% of the economy and includes all service industries such as banks, accommodation, hospitality, transport and health.

Although the decline was small, it hit a broad sector of the econmy.

BNZ economist Doug Steel said the index is the latest in a series of indicators pointing to slower growth.

Mr Steel said BNZ has cut its gross domestic product growth forecast from 0.5% to 0.3%, raising the chances of a cut in the Official Cash Rate.

State pension scheme makes loss

The state service pension scheme, the Government Superannuation Fund has made a loss of $17 million in the year to June.

RadioNZ,

15 October, 2012

The Fund, which has 66,000 members, says after two strong years, the return was a 0.5% loss, compared with a 12% rise in 2011.

It says investments in emerging markets and foreign currencies failed to add value to the fund, while the high dollar impacted on returns from unhedged foreign assets.