Financial Repression Is Repressing Financially

I told you that greedy and unrestrained governments have been stealing from people who followed the most elementary principles of saving and investing.

Hundreds of billions of dollars are in this pickle noted above because of decades of conventional wisdom that the retirement of the Baby Boomers would precipitate a massive secular shift from stocks to bonds, that all these wealthy, healthy, active children of the 1950s would sock their wealth into fixed income so they could live in retirement bliss with all the Viagara, Prilosec, sushi dinners and Third World travel they could handle, all funded by ample, reliable streams of regular income.  This was conventional wisdom for decades - boomers will drive down stocks in favor of bonds.  And it has been happening - the mutual fund flows tell the story - but something bad happened on the way to Boomer Retirement Bliss.  They don't have enough bonds paying them enough interest to afford the retirements they expected.  The generation just before them - the WW2 generation - sucked up the last of the sweet-paying bonds, they're keeping them and nothing like them will be issued again in time for the Boomers.  In other words, the Boomers are stuck.

Now, this is starting to become better understood.

Frankly, I have some sympathy for actual individuals but not for the Baby Boomers in general.  They fucked up the country.  More on that later, after I read P.J. O'Rourke's piece in the weekend WSJ...