A member of the last generation

IBM is the latest company to announce doing away with pensions and replacing them with the risky 401Ks (ask Enron workers what they think of 401Ks). IBM is talking about what it will save the company, but not what it will cost their employees.

I suspect, unless there is major increased action on the part of the population, my generation is the last one to enjoy any sense of security. And if the whole bubble breaks we will not be safe either.

The US population is suffering the results of the same economic ideas that the IMF and World Bank are contaminating the rest of the world with, in what the IMF calls world stabilization(?) policies that that include: privatization (read sell off of national assets: oil, gas, forests, water – or trying to privatize things like Social Security), opening capital markets (where capital more often then not flows out of the country as in Brazil and Indonesia), then comes marketing-based pricing. To get an IMF loan a country must accept these and other draconian policies.

The results for the general populace include: reduced salaries, reduced pensions, more working hours, no job stability and less employment. Look around does this seem familiar? And it isn’t always in countries like Brazil, Ecuador and Tanzania just to name three who have followed these policies that have seen the number of their poor increase and the quality of life go down as large corporations rape their natural resources when following IMF rules.

Brazil just paid off its IMF loan ahead of schedule but had to almost strip its treasury to do it. The overall movement in Latin America is away from these policies by governments that prefer to use their resources to support health, education and other quality of life payments for its citizens rather than to support stock holders of foreign corporations.

However, these same policies are being foisted on the US in the name of globilization. For those who think – there she goes raging again – look at Joseph Stiglitz, former insider and Nobel Laureate in Economics, Greg Palast, London Observer columnist or Paul Krugman.

As one of the last generation I wonder when others will wake up and realize that they are part of accepting being the screwee.