To be retired in a globalized world (73)

Yesterday I watched a program dealing with the “crisis” and its causes. Of course, I already knew a lot. But the program was very clarifying and showed how the greediness for wealth did that the banks gave credits to people without security that they could pay back. The dubious method was as follows: Sell your claims to other banks and credit institutes. The buyer can “packet” the claims, sometimes with shares to financial instruments and sell these instruments to other banks. In that way it was almost impossible to know what was in these ”packets”. Some people talk about “toxic assets”. And the banks, even in Europe And Sweden, sold these assets between themselves like anything. Everything functioned till the borrowers couldn´t pay back their loans. And the interest changes, everybody knows that. Yesterday I read in the news that next year they will lower the superannuation´s with five percent or something like this. This due to that the pension´s funds have declined too much, partly because the banks have invested in toxic assets. All the newspapers have economic appendixes and there are I don´t know how many journalists, but nobody has warned of any immediate danger. The Swedes get their pension from they are 65. Next year I´ll be 65, that is I´m beginning my career as retired with lower pension. And I hadn´t foreseen anything like that, of course, to have my pension lowered because of the banks in the US, that gave credits without security enough. But things like these make you understand how it is to live in a globalized world. Yes, life is filled with hard proofs and surprises.