The markets are going to go into meltdown soon, so expect stocks to lose 20 percent of their value, Marc Faber, author of the Gloom, Boom and Doom report told CNBC on Tuesday.

Continued:

via Marc Faber: Prepare for a Massive Market Meltdown —  Business News – CNBC.

For all our UK readers, who hope some day to collect pension benefits, we have two messages: i) our condolences, and ii) you won’t.   Why? The answer comes straight from the ONS:

The new supplementary table published by ONS in Levy (2012)10 includes the following headline figures for Government pension obligations as at end December 2010:

Social security pension schemes (i.e. unfunded state pension scheme obligations): £3.843 trillion, being 263 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) (£3.497 trillion at end of December 2009)

Centrally – administered unfunded pension schemes for public sector employees (i.e. unfunded public service pension scheme obligations): £852 billion, being 58 per cent of GDP (£915 billion at end of December 2009)

Funded DB pension schemes for which government is responsible: £313 billion, being 21 per cent of GDP (£332 billion at end of December 2009).

In summary, the estimates in the new supplementary table indicate a total Government pension obligation, at the end of December 2010, of £5.01 trillion, or 342 per cent of GDP, of which around £4.7 trillion relates to unfunded obligations.

Or visually:

Of course, US-based readers should not get their hopes up too much either. With total underfunded liabilities – including SSN and healthcare, in the US well over $100 trillion (on under $16 trillion of GDP) it is only a matter of time before the entire welfare state ponzi scheme blows up.

Source: ONS

via The UK’s Most Disturbing Number: Total Unfunded Pension Obligations = 321% Of GDP | ZeroHedge.