Recently, Chariman of the Federal Reserve Board, Ben Bernanke, predicted dire economic consequences of having left the issue of Social Security so late. His remarks concern the impending retirement of the Baby Boomer generation, with the first of them just one year from retirement age.

But will it be as economically destructive as we think? Some say: not necessarily.

The plain fact is that most boomers have not done enough to plan for retirement and won’t be retiring at age 65 because they simply can’t afford to. A survey conducted by Merrill Lynch found that nearly 80% of boomers intend to keep working beyond age 65.

Although boomers are expected to live longer than any other generation in American history, potentially bankrupting Social Security and Medicare, improved health will also allow them to work longer and continue to contribute to the economy, rather than retiring. Additionally, better health (as evidenced by the dropping rates of death from heart disease, stroke and even cancer) indicate that the boomer retirees will be less dependent than other generations, lowering medical costs and long-term care expenditures.

The boomer generation has always been different and did everything differently from all generations that came before them. Their ideas and actions changed the face of society and perhaps the course of history. When it comes to growing older, it is likely they will do that differently from other generations as well.

It’s not easy to panic a boomer.

Boomers grew up in the uncertainty of the Cold War. In 1949, The Soviet Union exploded its first nuclear device and the US was no longer the only country with “the bomb”. The government worked very hard at two things: raising public concern about being ready for nuclear attack, and trying to allay public concern by producing civil defense plans. The fact that these civil defense plans advised “Duck and Cover” - the advice to hide under your desk in case of nuclear attack - make them seem laughable today.

But the nuclear attack didn’t happen and as weapons proliferated, the concern was MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction. So far, that hasn’t happened either.

Then we moved on to the population explosion. Overpopulation has been a concern since Thomas Malthus proposed that human populations would grow until they exceeded the ability of the earth to produce enough food for all of them. Of course he predicted this in 1798 and it was supposed to have happened by the mid-19th century. Boomers had their own Malthus in the person of Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, published in 1968. Ehrlich is known for his many accurate predictions such as: hundreds of millions of people worldwide would starve to death between 1970 and 1985; that life expectancy in the US wuold drop to 42 years due to the use of pesticides; and by 1999, there would only be 22.6 million of us left. In fact, the US has recently zipped past the 300 million mark for population and is still growing.

Fast forward to December 31, 1999 as the entire world held its breath waiting for the computer meltdown that would cause widespread power outages, water shortages, possible nuclear warhead launches and financial catastrophe. As the clock ticked over in each and every time zone, those cowering in their bunkers - surrounded by their cans of food, bottles of water and Y2K compliant flashlights - were left feeling mighty foolish.

The popular threat of today is global warming. It appears the earth is going through such a rapid increase in temperature (all our fault, by the way) that scientists have been able to find something to attribute to global warming on a nearly daily basis. Even the fact that the plains states are in the grip of their third blizzard of the season is a sign of global warming. I read a headline on ABC News that read “Unseasonable weather jolts Northeast”. I live in the Northeast and I can tell you that when you walk out of your house in January and are greeted by single digit temperatures and minus zero wind chill factors, you can feel a bit jolted. But walking out today into the sunshine and the balmy 74 degrees farenheit didn’t bother me in the least.

Ah, but you say that these record high temperatures are proof positive of global warming. Consider then, this bit of information available on the Drudge Report:

NYC had record high of 68F on Jan 13, 1932. 70F on Jan 14, 1932 and 67F on Jan 15, 1932…

1932 it was equally as warm during this same month and yet in the early 1970s, an imminent ice age was being predicted.

CNN has a story on their website entitled “Ancient ice shelf breaks free”. It has been up for several days now. Apparently nothing else was happening in the field of science. The truth is, they just want to make sure you see it. In case you missed it, they will leave it there so at some point, curiosity will get the better of you and you will read about this ancient ice shelf breaking free and …

Within days, the floating ice shelf had drifted a few miles (kilometers) offshore. It traveled west for 50 kilometers (31 miles) until it finally froze into the sea ice in the early winter.

It froze again somewhere nearby. Bet you didn’t expect that. Because by now global warming should have taken it out into the ocean where it would melt away, raising sea levels, drowning millions and proving them right. But never fear, the fact that it didn’t do that doesn’t mean global warming isn’t happening overnight.

The doomsayers have been around forever. The fact that things keep getting better doesn’t seem to dissuade them in any way from their dire predictions.

But never fear, the government is putting out a new video about global warming. It seems that if the polar ice caps do melt, you should duck and cover.

According to the Boston College Center for Retirement Research, today’s workers are at risk of having insufficient resources at retirement. With lifespans lengthening, the retirement age rising and poorly funded 401K accounts, the baby boomer faces an uncertain future.

But housing equity is growing and offers at least one source of retirement funding for the baby boomer - a reverse mortgage.

In Will Reverse Mortgages Rescue the Baby Boomers? by Andrew D. Eschtruth, Wei Sun, and Anthony Webb, the authors explore the complicated subject of accessing home equity through reverse mortgages.