Starting in 2017, EU rules will require European governments to calculate the total amount they must pay current and future pensioners. Making this obligation more visible could spur them to deal with it, said Hans Hoogervorst, chairman of the International Accounting Standards Board and a former Dutch finance minister. “It will make clear that the current situation is unsustainable.”
Such a rule would be helpful here, as well.
They will just tell bigger lies.
A few years back a young woman developed and produced a “Balance Sheet” for the U S which was refined into a published format.
I Got and kept copies for a couple of years.
It did pretty well what Arnold suggests.
It was a kind of thing that would cause congestion in the legislative lavatories if closely read.
A great rule — and what a central gov’t should be doing. Making the more local gov’t, whether state or city, more honest & transparent with the financial promises it is making.
Even if many politicians do lie about it, making them actually tell the lie is better than pretending all is OK so they avoid being honest about it. And the lies will become more clearly lies, which should be discrediting the party and philosophy of the liars, even if 10 or 30 years late.
I’ve noticed that U.S. bureacracies have started putting estimations on the amount of time required to fill out each of their forms, too. That seems like the same idea: make it more visible how much time is being spent on paperwork, and there will be some sort of pushback on it.
I am not so sure it is working, though. The people who make the forms seem to control what the time estimates will come out to, and often they don’t strike me as very accurate. As well, I don’t understand what the mythical next step of enforcement.
It’s better to just insist on payment up front. Pensions should be illegal, and instead, retirement funding should be via retirement accounts. In the U.S., that would be a 401k. If you want honest dealing, then don’t ask someone to submit you a detailed report how they are going to pay you decades into the future. Have them go ahead and pay you, or at least put the money in escrow.
Be careful what you wish for. The Europeans are broke. Dead broke. Not sure showing it n their financial statements at this point is all that helpful. 30 years ago, would have been a great idea, though not sure it would have mattered.
Now, how do ratings agencies react. How does ECB react to backstopping a bunch of European banks holding paper of broke European governments? It could get ugly fast.