Yep. Both my parents are retired school teachers, living on their teacher's union pensions. Both are behaviorally conservative, but both also drank the koolaid and voted for Obama. I love my parents, but man, are they ever in for a rude awakening. I can't even talk to my father about politics anymore, he refused to discuss it.
There are none so blind as they who will not see.
I live in a retirement community and most of my neighboirs have lost half their savings. These savings and stocks are generating the income to pay for the month;y fees and living expenses. Not any more.
The losses are real and they hurt deeply.
Zero and Joe the Dumber have a lot of explaining to do.
# All pension funds, private and public, are done. If you are receiving one, you won't be. If you think you will in the future, you won't be. PBGC will fail as well. Pension funds will be forced to start eating their "seed corn" within the next 12 months and once that begins there is no way to recover.
# All annuities will be defaulted to the state insurance protection (if any) on them. The state insurance funds will be bankrupted and unable to be replenished. Essentially, all annuities are toast. Expect zero, be ecstatic if you do better. All insurance companies with material exposure to these obligations will go bankrupt, without exception. Some of these firms are dangerously close to this happening right here and now; the rest will die within the next 6-12 months. If you have other insured interests with these firms, be prepared to pay a LOT more with a new company that can't earn anything off investments, and if you have a claim in process at the time it happens, it won't get paid. The probability of you getting "boned" on any transaction with an insurance company is extremely high - I rate this risk in excess of 90%.
# The FDIC will be unable to cover bank failure obligations. They will attempt to do more of what they're doing now (raising insurance rates and doing special assessments) but will fail; the current path has no chance of success. Congress will backstop them (because they must lest shotguns come out) with disastrous results. In short, FDIC backstops will take precedence even over Social Security and Medicare.
# Government debt costs will ramp. This warning has already been issued and is being ignored by President Obama. When (not if) it happens debt-based Federal Funding will disappear. This leads to....
# Tax receipts are cratering and will continue to. I expect total tax receipts to fall to under $1 trillion within the next 12 months. Combined with the impossibility of continued debt issue (rollover will only remain possible at the short duration Treasury has committed to over the last ten years if they cease new issue) a 66% cut in the Federal Budget will become necessary. This will require a complete repudiation of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, a 50% cut in the military budget and a 50% across-the-board cut in all other federal programs. That will likely get close.
# Tax-deferred accounts will be seized to fund rollovers of Treasury debt at essentially zero coupon (interest). If you have a 401k, or what's left of it, or an IRA, consider it locked up in Treasuries; it's not yours any more. Count on this happening - it is essentially a certainty.
The time we've all been waiting for appears to have arrived...
My Grandparents voted for Clinton '92 because of his campaign stance on NAFTA (he was against it, likely turned out to be right....). Clinton lied (imagine that!) and reneged on his promise to veto the bill.
Grandpa passed away a few years back, but Grandma is still mad about it. Dems will never get another vote from her. Ever. She still refers to Hillary as "That Traitorous Bitch"; I think that I can count on one hand the number of times I've heard her curse.
Have faith, Dems always manage to screw up whatever they touch.
They probably have defined benefit pensions, which we will be asked to bail out soon enough, due to the shortages in the plans. That will be one of the next big hits, having to bail out retirement plans for all kind of union and government workers whose plans have lost money.
No one will be bailing out the rest of us who have lost 50% of OUR life savings...