Poland Confiscates Half Of Private Pension Funds To "Cut" Sovereign Debt Load

So in the end - the working people took the hit again. This is why my pension fund will be in gold, real estate, stocks and businesses - preferably not in my country.

And so it begins...
Wake up and smell the cheese.

time to fall in own dig ditch...good bye

again the rich get richer and the poor get kicked in the teeth

There is so much wrong that people do not know, Poland was a manufacturing country before transformation to "democracy". We were probably number one country in EU in sugar production, we were building ships in north part of the country etc. many more examples like that search then you will find extrodinary things about it like one of the first computers in the world I believe in 50's happened here.
This was destroyed during last 23 odd years and we became country of consumption, where debt is good and spending is the only way to do it(feck yeah!)
Now for the last 6 years current gov have took so much debt that they are force to cook the books in order to meet EU norms while other countries broke them long time ago (Maastricht Treaty ect.).
The best part of it - you won't see any demos here, it is not like in Paris.
Bastards lovin it.

I suppose this is one way of lowering debt to GDP ratio. Other countries have already shown Poland that once you've buried your head in the sand, you can just keep burrowing for miles.

no matter what statistics say - it is getting worse and worse in Poland and prime minister donald tusk (written with small letters as I have no respect for this liar) never keeps his promises. PO party is voted for only because people are afraid of PiS with jaroslaw kaczynski which seems to be for me religious fanatic and is obsessed about his brother's death (I feel sorry for him but he pushes it too far). Overall the situation is getting worse and worse, the unemployment is getting higher and reaches 14% at the moment when 2-3mln people have left the country - most of them for good. Imagine how high it would be if they all suddenly came back?
I can bet that if tusk will win next elections - they will start robbing people's savings Cyprus style, and will increase VAT to about 26-27%, will send even more policemen on the street to fine people for everything, for speeding, for crossing the street on red light etc.
And the foreign affair minister radoslaw sikorski is a joke. you can insult Poles, you can spit them in their faces and he will write on his twitter than nothing happened and will apologise the person that spat for the fact. There are parties in UK and NL that start blaming Poles for all that's bad in those countries - I bet you can start slaughtering Poles like pigs on the streets in those countries and sikorski will write on his twitter that nothing really happened and will apologise to butchers - modern brownnosing.
I won't even mention that it is country with the most expensive roads, and stadiums - guess why?

In general I would not invest a single penny in Poland

Well, Eur_Usd - things could be worse - Poland is a shining star compared to Bulgaria (EU member as well for a joke), so - heads up! :-)

I've been to Bulgaria, and I agree, it is poor, but it doesn't mean Poland has to go that way, and it looks like it's going down
but I enjoyed the holidays in Bulgaria ;-)

Polish private pension funds system is corrupt from the beginning. Pension funds take 3-4% of your monthly deposited money up front (they used to take even 7% before) and then they take 0,4% as asset management fee off your total assets. So basically they rob you 4-5% to start with. Then they park 60% of the money in government bonds. How can that not be lucrative business opportunity? System is mandatory. I could park my money in government bonds if I wanted to without paying 4-5% "mandatory commission" to pension funds. The ones that now shout the most for the sake of "the poor people" are the fat cats at pension funds. Just check their P/L statements. Any of them losing money? No, just the opposite. What was the average yearly rate of return for the pensioners in the last years? Has it beaten bank deposits or government bond yield?

Shouldnt they be confiscating government pensions, and not private ones... o well stuff dont make sense to me sometimes.

Polish government borrowed the money and has now reneged on the debt. that should be called a default and their credit rating should go to "D". NO ONE SHOULD EVER LOAN THEM MONEY AGAIN

In fact Polish private pension funds got the privilege of collecting some part of taxes from working people as a result of the pension reform in 1999. Namely they take some part of social security tax and manage this money as mutual funds taking the managment fees. Polish government just humbly proposed to reduce this part because these funds buy mainly Polish government bonds. If Polish government succeeds then it should actually improve their rating because they will stop mismanagement of public money.