Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

It doesn't take much predicting the future to know the future of money saved for retirement; there isn't going to be any. Before anybody raising kids today can retire, whatever they have saved will be gone. Most of it's gone already, you just don't know it yet. Retirement funds operate on the assumption that they get some kind of return, 4 or 5% at least, some need double digit returns just to meet their current obligations. That's simply not possible in today's less than 1% interest climate, so fund managers are forced to put the money in the Stock Market, but the Stock Market is a Zero-sum game: somebody wins, somebody loses. All of those people you hear about making big money in the Stock Market, it's got to be coming from somewhere: the $24 trillion in supposed retirement funds is where.

Retirement funds really only exist on paper, the money's been lost, it just hasn't showed up in the accounting because nobody is watching too closely since they won't be getting it for decades. There's lots of chicanery: all future retirees know is the yearly balance sheet that comes in the mail telling them how much their imaginary nest egg is imaginarily increasing. A quarter century from now when people really want the money, it won't be there; it's a Ponzi scheme that depends on young Workers paying into the system. The solution, if there is any, will take both inflation & fund bankruptcy.