Yesterday, the Polish state confiscated slightly under 50% of the private sector pension fund assets. In a new and even more bizarre form of Geithner Bazooka, given that the Polish Government has so much debt (and cannot credibly issue any more), the newly confiscated assets will dramatically reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio. Thus, with its debt halved, the Warsaw Government is in good shape to issue more sovereign bonds and get a high uptake…..thus landing itself yet further in debt. But at the private citizen-saver’s expense.
Although I could bill this as the never-ending-yet-never-happening wake-up call for the European populace, it isn’t really: on a brass-neck scale of nought to ten, the Poles are doing nothing different to the eleven out of ten scored by the US and UK….who handed out rescue monies using private citizens’ taxes, and in Britain’s case f**ked up a mutual bank so badly, it now plans to make ordinary investors in the Co-op Bank destitute with its first ‘Open Bank reconciliation’.
But it is a poke in the eye for those who persist in calling The Slog ‘alarmist’. Remember: as The Slog revealed here exclusively three months ago, a similar pension confiscation going direct to the private suppliers has been on the Troika’s Greek agenda for ages. Both Greece and Spain have, in turn, stolen the citizens’ social security and pension budgets to pay off debt.
When, one wonders, will people decide to do something about this slow, up-against-the-wall rape?
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