Wells Fargo warns of looming retirement crisis

[Jesus Malverde]

There's a major crisis building as baby boomers envision golden years that shine the way their parents' did. One big problem: They don't have the financial resources or huge generational cohort behind them to support their retirement dreams.

In my opinion, the situation quickly slips into a vicious cycle as real estate, stocks and other assets fall in value as boomers cut back on their spending to either save for retirement or stretch their retirement income. Don't expect to hear that premise from those in the business of selling stocks and real estate, however.

The latest figures from Wells Fargo paint a bleak picture indeed. The San Francisco bank finds that 37 percent of middle-class respondents say, "I'll never retire, but work until I'm too sick or die." And 42 percent say they can't pay today's bills and save for retirement.

“We do this survey every year, and for the past three years, the struggle to pay bills is a growing concern and the prospect of saving for retirement looks dim, particularly for those in their prime saving years,” said Laurie Nordquist, head of Wells Fargo Institutional Retirement and Trust. “We’d like to try to help people find the silver lining and create a path to retirement savings."

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2013/10/wells-fargo-bank-of-america-retirement.html?ana=e_du_pub&s=article_du&ed=2013-10-28

[Warpy]

1. Make the billionaires pay back what they stole from us

through sweetheart tax deals that forced Congress to raid our Social Security to pay the bills.

Claw it back any way we can. It's our money.

[FreakinDJ]

4. DING DING DING - Thread Winner

[newfie11]

7. Agree. Nt

[woo me with science]

13. [phone]

[postulater]

2. Well, I plan on spending my retirement working to pay for Cheney's wars.

Don't know about you but what more enjoyable goal to work for than that.

[Jacoby365]

3. Wells Fargo has done plenty

To contribute to the situation by stealing billions from their customers over the years.

[Uncle Joe]

12. That's only the tip of the iceberg, Wells Fargo has all sorts of plans for the American People.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/whats-wrong-wells-fargo

Wells Fargo, which acquired Wachovia in the wake of the financial crisis, controlled roughly 28.8% of all home loans issued across the United States in 2012, compared to 11.2% of the market it controlled in 2007, just before the housing implosion. In 2012, the bank paid a $175 million settlement following revelations that “mortgage brokers working with Wells Fargo had charged higher fees and rates to more than 30,000 minority borrowers across the country than they had to white borrowers who posed the same credit risk.”

In the settlement, the world’s largest bank “admitted no wrongdoing,” noting in a press release that the bank simply wanted “to avoid a long and costly legal fight.” Then, in 2013, Wells Fargo agreed to a further $42 million settlement because “it neglected the maintenance and marketing of foreclosed homes in black and Latino neighborhoods across the country.” Again, of course, the bank admitted no wrongdoing.

(snip)

It gets better. In 2010, Wachovia – which was purchased by Wells Fargo in 2008 – paid a settlement of $160 million for laundering over $100 million in drug money for Mexican and Colombian drug cartels. Further, the bank admitted that it had failed to “apply the proper anti-laundering strictures” regarding the bank’s handling of $378.4 billion in currency exchanges with Mexico between 2004 and 2007. A federal prosecutor commented, “Wachovia’s blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations,” as tens of thousands of Mexicans were killed in an exponentially violent drug war.

Thus, in the aftermath of the financial crisis, not only did the big banks receive sprawling government bailouts (Wells Fargo got $25 billion from the U.S. government), but according to the UN, proceeds pouring in from the global drug trade ultimately helped keep Wells Fargo and others afloat as “the only liquid investment capital” available to them during the crisis. But Wells Fargo didn't just profit from laundering money for major drug cartels -- it also profited, and continues to profit, at the other end of the drug war as a major investor in the prison-industrial complex, specifically with heavy investments in the GEO Group, the second largest private prison company in the United States.

[Auggie]

5. This is nothing compared to the coming climate crisis

[FarCenter]

9. If the economy collapses fast enough, fossil fuel use will decline and the crises will be averted

[TheMastersNemesis]

6. This Situation Is What America Gets For Letting The GOP Live

[Dreamer Tatum]

10. So you're back to wanting them dead? nt

[Earth_First]

8. 34 here...

Even with a decent paying job, after bills are paid with a small portion going into 'savings' (which often pays bills anyways...) there is next to nothing to save for retirement savings.

Additionally, I have an employer that offers no pension or 401 (k) program.

I'm fucked.

The only hope we have is to sink as much as we can into our starter home that we own, resell it at a small profit, and buy something smaller we can pay cash for.

That is the *only* sort of retirement plan I have.

[JDPriestly]

11. They claim they missed the housing bubble.

They seem able to foresee the coming retirement crisis. I've been explaining this for years now.

This is a foolish notion:

The San Francisco bank finds that 37 percent of middle-class respondents say, "I'll never retire, but work until I'm too sick or die." And 42 percent say they can't pay today's bills and save for retirement.

You will only work as long as jobs are available.

And unless we drastically change our trade policies and tax imports as well as service labor performed overseas, you won't have a job when you reach retirement age.

I planned and invested in education so that I could work to 70. It did not work out that way.

You will work until your boss fires you or lets you know that he prefers the younger employees. And then you will only work as long as you can get a job.

No. Stand up against cuts to Social Security. That is where your retirement income will come from. Unless things change for the better, you will not earn enough interest from the savings you have in the bank. How about the bank that is paying less than $1 interest on a savings account of $5,000? That's what you will see as long as we have outsourcing.

And the stock market right now is artificially inflated by money pushed into the banks by the Fed.

We need to stop exporting and outsourcing jobs. Bring the jobs home. End the trade agreements we now have. Renegotiate trade agreements that will mean jobs in America for Americans. Any other country would do that for their citizens.