[quote=ravinos]If you want to seriously examine underfunded pension liabilities, look no further than the huge hole the the Federal government’s PBGC, (Pension Fund Guaranty Corp),agency is sinking into. Liabilities of American corporate pension plans are running into the hundreds of billions of promised benefit shortages and if they did a true mark at market accounting, instead of the actuarial hanky-panky, a big number of them would be insolvent.Bigger than Germany’s obligations and even bigger that the FDIC.
And implying racism, because I categorize a corporate theory as “Anglo-American” borders on the paranoid. In fact, you probably used the below the belt racism slur because of my screen name, “Ravinos”, assuming I was non-Anglo, but of Latin/Hispanic or Southern Europe/Mediterranean descent. I assure you, there’s a good chance I’m more “Anglo”, that you are, whatever that counts for in your world, as my father was born in Britain, my grandmother in Scotland and as a result hold dual citizenship, U.S.A./U.K.
God Save the Queen ! God Bless the Working Man ![/quote]
Ravino: Given your ethnicity, I now stand even more fervently behind my racist comment. I’d be hard-pressed to imagine an empire quite as racist as the British Empire, which gave us “The White Man’s Burden” and nearly all of the problems we as Americans are presently confronting in the world, whether we’re talking about Afghanistan, Palestine, Pakistan and recently, the Balkans.
We also have the Brits to thank for complete ineptitude in the volatile mix of Labour policies and politics, intermixed with the disastrous decades of the 1960s and 1970s (remember the IMF bailing out England?). If this is the yardstick we’re trying to emulate, well, no thanks.
I’m German on both sides of my family, and quite familiar with “Perfidious Albion”. You might have noticed, but we Americans had to wage two separate wars to kick your confiscatory, monarchical and inbred asses out of North America.
“God save the Queen”? Really? I loathe everything she represents (Divine Right, anyone?) and boasting about 700 years of oppression isn’t something I’d crow about.