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Monday, October 12, 2015

The Problem With Pension Funds Is That You Run Out Of Young Employees To Pay For The Retirees Compounded By Poor Investments

Teamsters Pension Crisis Hints at Deeper Problems for Retirement Funds

(Illustration: Dollar Photo Club)

By R Williams | Friday, 09 Oct 2015 03:16 PM

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Pension funds are facing a crisis that is only going to get worse as their investment gains have trouble keeping up with the growing costs of benefits, says David Tawil, president and founder of hedge fund Maglan Capital.

Retired workers this week were reminded of that debacle as a Teamsters pension fund told its 400,000 members that it filed to reorganize to avoid a total collapse.

The Central States Pension Fund pays out $3.46 in benefits to retirees for every dollar received in employer contributions, according to the New York Times, leading to near-certain insolvency.

“No one foresaw that the work force would diminish and have to support an ever-growing number of pensioners who frankly are living longer lives,” Tawil said in an interview. “At the same time, pension funds didn’t expect that interest rates would stay at historic lows, causing difficulty in achieving target returns.”

The Federal Reserve cut rates to near zero percent in 2008, when the U.S. economy declined the most in 80 years. Fed Chair Janet Yellen last month said she expected the central bank to hike rates this year for the first time since 2006 as the economy continued to grow.

When Gas Prices Exploded Years Ago, They Took Gas And Food Out Of Inflation Calculation, Now That Gas Prices Have Dropped, They Are Now Included. Another Example Of Government Tampering With The Numbers!

Lower Gas Prices Means No Social Security Increase Next Year

Sunday, 11 Oct 2015 03:49 PM

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For just the third time in 40 years, millions of Social Security recipients, disabled veterans and federal retirees can expect no increase in benefits next year, unwelcome news for more than one-fifth of the nation's population.

They can blame low gas prices.

By law, the annual cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, is based on a government measure of inflation, which is being dragged down by lower prices at the pump.

The government is scheduled to announce the COLA — or lack of one — on Thursday, when it releases the Consumer Price Index for September. Inflation has been so low this year that economists say there is little chance the September numbers will produce a benefit increase for next year.

Prices actually have dropped from a year ago, according to the inflation measure used for the COLA.

"It's a very high probability that it will be zero," said economist Polina Vlasenko, a research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research. "Other prices — other than energy — would have to jump. It would have to be a very sizable increase that would be visible, and I don't think that's happened."

Congress enacted automatic increases for Social Security beneficiaries in 1975, when inflation was high and there was a lot of pressure to regularly raise benefits. Since then, increases have averaged 4 percent a year.

Only twice before, in 2010 and 2011, have there been no increases.

In all, the COLA affects payments to more than 70 million Americans.

Almost 60 million retirees, disabled workers, spouses and children get Social Security benefits. The average monthly payment is $1,224.

The COLA also affects benefits for about 4 million disabled veterans, 2.5 million federal retirees and their survivors, and more than 8 million people who get Supplemental Security Income, the disability program for the poor. Many people who get SSI also receive Social Security.

Carol Mead of Montrose, Pennsylvania, said she and her husband were counting on Social Security COLA to help them with their finances.

"My husband is working just so we can pay our bills," said Mead, a retired land-use administrator. "He's 70 years old, and he's still working in a stone quarry. He's told me a number of times that he thinks he's going to have to work until the day he dies."

More bad news: The lack of a COLA means that older people could face higher health care costs.

Most have their Medicare Part B premiums for outpatient care deducted directly from their Social Security payments, and the annual cost-of-living increase is usually enough to cover any rise in premiums. When that doesn't happen, a long-standing federal "hold harmless" law protects the majority of beneficiaries from having their Social Security payments reduced.

Money Funding Anti Semitism World Wide

The New Racists: David Miller, Hilary Aked, Kevin MacDonald

by Samuel Westrop
October 12, 2015 at 5:00 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6677/david-miller-hilary-aked-kevin-macdonald

Comment

It seems as if in the minds of David Miller, Kevin MacDonald and Hilary Aked, a mysterious Jewish cabal is responsible for all the world's ills.
Even Tony Blair, Miller argues, is in league with a sinister "international network" of Israeli settlers and American "Islamophobes."
"A liberal Muslim is their trussed-up version of the enemy, the alien, the 'other'." — Nick Cohen, journalist.
Hilary Aked describes moderate Muslims as "native informants." She also believes that a hidden Jewish network is responsible for the "Islamophobia industry." She has frequently written for a Qatari-funded media group that is accused by Egyptian newspapers of being a Muslim Brotherhood front group.
Electronic Intifada is a prominent pro-Hamas publication, whose founder, Ali Abunimah, describes Palestinian leaders who talk with Israel as "collaborators."
To fund his obsession with the "propaganda" ostensibly spread by Jews and anti-Islamist Muslims, Miller has received grants from the Economic and Social Research Council, a body funded by the British government. In 2012, Miller received £400,000 from the Council, as well as grants from groups affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.

From his office at the University of Bath, David Miller, an academic and writer, researches organizations and activists that he believes, in his words, work to "distort public debate and undermine democracy."
The results of this research, done with the help of his students and assembled into detailed profiles of the shadowy figures behind this lobbying, are published across a number of websites run by Miller, including PowerBase and SpinWatch.
A visitor to these websites will quickly note one particular constant: a vast number of Miller's profiles focus on Jews and Muslims who are working to fight extremism and terrorism.
Counter-terrorism groups, "neocons" and various political organizations are all accused of belonging to a "covert propaganda operation" for various Jewish organizations. Even Tony Blair, Miller argues, is in league with a sinister "international network" of Israeli settlers and American "Islamophobes."
As one blogger notes, any of Miller's "fellow academics" who do not present strong convictions against Israel, are "smeared... as neocons."
Shiraz Maher, a counter-terrorism expert, has written: "Despite the 'close to ten thousand' entries on SpinProfiles [another Miller project] you will find nothing on [Islamist pressure] groups. ... The problem is with SpinProfile's apparent obsession with 'Jewish power' or, if you will, 'the Jewish lobby'."
At a recent conference organized by Miller, American academic Deepa Kumar denouncedMuslims working to combat extremism and terrorism within their communities as "native informants." And as the journalist Nick Cohen observed: "For the religious [Islamic] right and the political and academic left, a liberal Muslim is their trussed-up version of the enemy, the alien, the 'other'."
Another David Miller site, Neocon Europe (now defunct), published the works of Kevin MacDonald, a prominent white supremacist who claims that Jews control the media and politicians to "transform the country to serve their interests." In a list entitled, "characteristics of Jewish intellectual movements," MacDonald has claimed that Jews "form a cohesive, mutually reinforcing core" that has "access to prestigious and mainstream media sources, partly as a result of Jewish influence on the media."
Other conspiracy theories promoted on Miller's websites include those of Miller's colleague, Idrees Ahmed, who claims that the Darfur crisis has been prolonged by a powerful Jewish lobby.
In 2009, David Miller provided accommodation for Joel Kovel, an anti-Jewish American academic who has written that, "The Holocaust has been repressed from history and converted into moral capital to cover and justify whatever the Jewish people would do in the way of domination themselves, whether this be the pell-mell immersion in American bourgeois life or the policies of Israel."
David Miller and his network also work with Muslim Brotherhood operatives. In 2009, Millersecured taxpayer funding to run a project examining British Islam in collaboration with Osama Saeed, a Muslim Brotherhood activist. Saeed was previously the spokesperson for the Muslim Association of Britain, the main organization for the Muslim Brotherhood in Britain. In 2005, Saeed called for the re-establishment of the Islamic caliphate; and in 2006, Saeed expressedpraise for the late Al Qaeda leader Anwar Al-Awlaki.
Miller's protégés include Hilary Aked, a blogger with a strong interest in British Jewish groups. Aked apparently believes that a hidden Jewish network is responsible for the "Islamophobia industry," and that there is a distinct "overlap between Islamophobia and Zionism." She alsodescribes moderate Muslims as "native informants."

Deepa Kumar (left) and Hilary Aked (right) condemn moderate Muslims as "native informants."

Aked is published at the online publication, Electronic Intifada, where she writes about "pro-Israel" infiltration of the media, and that pro-Israel conferences are part of a secretive "transnational Islamophobia industry."
Electronic Intifada is a prominent pro-Hamas publication, whose founder, Ali Abunimah, hasdescribed Palestinian leaders who talk with Israel as "collaborators," and claims that, "supporting Zionism is not atonement for the Holocaust, but its continuation in spirit."
Aked has also frequently written for Al Araby Al Jadeed, a Qatari-funded media group that isaccused by Egyptian newspapers of being a Muslim Brotherhood front group. Al Araby's editor-in-chief, Wael Qandil, is described by the Arab newspaper Al Arabiya as a prominent supporterof the Muslim Brotherhood.
To fund his obsession with the "propaganda" ostensibly spread by Jews and anti-Islamist Muslims, Miller has received grants from the Economic and Social Research Council, a body funded by the British government. In 2012, Miller received £400,000 ($614,000 USD) from the Council.
Miller's projects have also received funding from a number of Islamist groups tied to the Muslim Brotherhood and the terror group, Hamas, including:

£2000 from Interpal, a British charity closely linked to Hamas. Interpal's leaders regularly attend Hamas rallies and ceremonies in the Gaza strip. Interpal trustee Essam Yusuf even participated in a song that praised Hamas's terrorist activities and its "martyrs." Another Interpal trustee, Ibrahim Hewitt, has written of a "so-called Holocaust," andclaims: "The Jews cannot be entrusted with the sanctity and security of this Holy Land."
£10,000 from Friends of Al Aqsa, an organization founded by Ismail Patel, who told a crowd in 2009 that, "Hamas is no terrorist organization. The reason they hate Hamas is because they refuse to be subjugated, occupied by the Israeli state, and we salute Hamas for standing up to Israel."

Khalid Amayreh

submission

A total of £15,000 from the Cordoba Foundation, a lobbying group led by senior Muslim Brotherhood official, Anas Al-Tikriti. Prime Minister David Cameron has described the Cordoba Foundation as a "political front for the Muslim Brotherhood."
£5000 from Middle East Monitor, a Muslim Brotherhood online publication. Its editor,Daud Abdullah, was a signatory to the Istanbul Declaration, a document that called for attacks on British troops and Jewish communities.
In 2011, Middle East Monitor brought the Hamas activist Raed Saleh to speak in Britain. Saleh has claimed (falsely) that 4000 Jews skipped work at the World Trade Center on 9/11 and that those who killed the "Martyr, Sheikh Osama Bin Laden" had "sold their consciences to Satan." David Miller is, in fact, a vocal supporter of Raed Saleh, andspoke in defence of Saleh at a court deportation hearing.

It seems as if in the minds of David Miller, Kevin MacDonald and Hilary Aked, a mysterious Jewish cabal is responsible for all the world's ills. Jewish money is supposedly the nexus between "Islamophobia," Western colonialism, terrorism and violent foreign policy.
That such views find a platform in academia -- and any funding by governments -- is, and probably should be, seriously troubling.
Anti-Jewish tropes have been the foundation of conspiracy theories for centuries. The ideas of Miller, MacDonald and Aked are not new, but they remain racist, xenophobic and false.

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