GFC Suicides and the ‘Super’ Swindle

By Ruth Skilbeck

Today’s front  page article in the Australian online announces “Market forcing retirees to work after $75bn paper loss in superannuation.” The article discusses the economic loss using standard mass media cliches: “Baby-boomer retirees are being forced back to work, with workers having almost nothing to show for contributing $430 billion to Australia’s compulsory superannuation pool since the global financial crisis”. ‘Wealth Editor’  Andrew Main omits to mention the cost in human terms.

The human toll of the GFC is as broad as it is global. This is recognized in the worldwide Occupy movement’s ‘We are the 99%'  slogan. The GFC has triggered an unreported chilling trend for suicide, and that includes suicide by the men ( and perhaps also women) who work in the finance industries - those who advised their clients to invest their earnings and  lifesavings.

                                                                Occupy Sydney, Martin Place  Photo: Ruth Skilbeck

When I lived in Balmoral (before I moved to Newcastle in Jan 2010) I had friends whose husbands or ex-husbands worked in  finance industries, and I can report that there are many stories that are not published in the mainstream media. About the human cost of the Global Financial Crisis, not only on those who have lost all their saving, and had their lifetime savings wiped to face a retirement of (comparative) poverty, but of those who worked in the finance industries that took those savings, advising their clients on where to “invest”. 

The GFC hit when I was living in Balmoral. A friend and her ex spouse attended the funeral of a good friend of theirs who drove to North Head. And then jumped off North Head. Leaving behind a wife and two adolescent children to fend for themselves. My friend was angry with him. Now what are his wife and children going to do? She knew of several men who worked in finance who had jumped off Northbridge. It’s never reported but it has happened a lot.

As a divorced, 'casual academic' and freelance journalist I have not been able to make enough money to lose. Twice I have had to draw down my  superannuation due to financial hardship. Each time it has amounted to a princely sum of $3,000 and the government has taken one-third of that in tax.

In comparison, there are those in a senior generation in my family who have lost considerable life savings for retirement earned in very successful full-time academic careers. Investments planned to support their retirement,  have disappeared. If they are ‘too old’ to return to the work force, what about them? 

The men who worked in finance who committed suicide could not face the moral consequences of what they had done: advise people such as my senior relatives to invest their earnings and savings into superannuation funds that evaporated like the Howard government’s attempts at integrity and accountability.

“The hit to nest eggs has been exacerbated by the flood of personal contributions Australians made after Howard government treasurer Peter Costello announced in the 2006 budget that pre-retirees could contribute an extra $1 million into their super funds until June 30 the following year as  an undeducted contribution - that is without paying extra tax on it. That attracted an extra $95bn of personal contributions to super just before the GFC hit.” 

Self managed super funds lost between 20 and 40 pc in 2008 - an unprecedented drop . Previously 5 pc was the most lost in the "tech wreck" of 2002  and in the 1930s depression (when my grandparents lost a lot of their savings after following the advice of their accountant). 

Could it be that the GFC is in some way a leveller from the  heights of economic  fantasy to our core humanity that always seems to emerge as we are suffering the most? The deep pre-semiotic reality of affect that  may yet be the salvation of the human race and the planet that we inhabit.

Given this, it is supremely ‘ironic’, if not blatant evidence of serving the machine  of the system for the mainstream media not to be reporting the human cost. Instead simply announcing “baby boomer retirees are being forced back to work.”  Note the use of  “forced”. In capitalism’s theatre of cruelty, such glib statements may be made with abandon. 

What a facile statement from the 'Wealth Editor'.

And yes, that is my opinion.