The town of Pritchard Alabama has defaulted on it's government pension obligations .  Retirees have been forced to return to work, and otherwise suffer disastrous quality of life impact as their pension payments stopped. 

Hindsight is almost always 20/20.  Governments all across America made unprecedentedly generous pension and retiree health care commitments with nary a thought as to how these commitments would be paid for.  Up till now, the price tag part was always going to be the can kicked down the road, and be someone else's problem.  Well, now we are nearing the end of that yellow brick road - the post-war population bubble has just now started a slow motion burst.  The problem is now ours - we are the 'someone else' that will have to deal with this.  The drain on pension funds will only accelerate from here as baby-boomer workers retire in the millions.  We must face the hard reality that these pension promises, along with the paid-for medical care promises, are financially impossible to meet.   The sooner we confront these inconvenient truths, the sooner we can figure out how to salvage what we have to try and prevent seniors from resorting to eating cat food and living in cardboard retirement 'communities'.

As I've said numerous times in other posts - the truly great calamities are a convergence of seemingly unrelated events that combine to precipitate disaster.  A nation severely weakened by chronic overspending. An aging population exiting the workforce/economy in large numbers, Pension funds being drawn down at alarming rates, which will directly impact the liquidity of capital markets.......a perfect storm. 

If we do not act on our fiscal problems as we would any other national emergency, then what is about to happen will make the Great Depression seem like a (dare i say) tea party.   Are we stupid enough to sit around and whine and argue while the country goes over the brink?  Are we?