THE $4.7 TRILLION PYRAMID: Why Social Security won't be enough to save Wall Street

by Dr. Michael Hudson, ISLET �
Harpers Magazine, April 2005

excerpt:

There is no denying that channeling trillions of Social Security dollars into the stock market would produce short-term gains. But once this money is spent, the markets are likely to retreat. That is what happens after a financial bubble. Then we will be right back where we are today, only much the poorer and with no guaranteed pension system for elderly Americans � who will, of course, need guaranteed pensions more than ever as they watch their stock holdings continue to shed value. Indeed, many other countries are just now recovering from their own dismal experiences with what Augusto Pinochet and Margaret Thatcher called "labor capitalism" and Bush calls, with no apparent irony, an "ownership society."

link found via BillTotten

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More -- The Plot Against Social Security from Economist's View

Then -- A very vicious circle from Intangible Wealth noting an article in The Economist linking the pension obligation costs as impacting profits in circular drag on stock values.

I have tried in the past to liken the drain of pensions on profitability to the drain of inefficient steel operations that prevented modernization. The point is that countries other than the industrialized nations with heavy pension obligations will be more profitable, just like Japanese steel post-WWII.