“They seem to embrace traditional social values, and yet had no qualms about helping themselves to the contents of everyone’s 401K.
Source? “
Whoa, that’s not good.
Well, mewykwistmas, you are only something less than half-right.
From the article your referenced it is clear that the “private” pension accounts were NOT like our “401k” plans, and were in fact more like “Fannie and Freddie” accounts, with Hungarian national government guarantees on the performance of the funds.
As it is, the “private pension” accounts brought back into the fold of the national pension system will remain individual accounts and be inheritable to the individual’s spouse.
Altogether it seems more like a “national accounting” change with not much really changing in what will go into the accounts, but the “national deficit” image is altered, for the benefit of the international financiers, by the inclusion of the “private pension” account balances back on the “reserves” side of the national government’s ledger. Given the guarantees that the national government had in place for those accounts all along, it may be less of a change than it would have been in an American context.