How they'll rob the Social Security fund

[Jim Sagle]

The Village has learned two important lessons on political economics during the last few years. The first is that if they listen to the American people, they will never get the privatization of Social Security (or by implication, Medicare) done. The American people will never fall for it. This was learned during w's feeble but earnest attempt to gut Social Security.

The second great lesson, learned during TARP, is that if they're willing to IGNORE the people, they can do absolutely anything they goddamn well feel like with no consequence whatsoever.

Not coincidentally, Village economist Niall Ferguson appeared on Charlie Rose Tuesday night. Just over 19 minutes into the segment, Ferguson explains it. To see this message delivered in all its upper crust snottiness, go to the Charlie Rose site and click on Archives (upper right corner) and then click on Ferguson's pic. More conveniently, from the transcript:

And at some point, the world is going to wake up to that and say it’s no longer sense to believe pile these bonds up in a reasonable expectation that the United States will either depreciate the debt away by letting the dollar fall through the floor or will actually start to call into question its own commitment to these payments.

And default is not a scenario we can rule out, let me put it that way.

CHARLIE ROSE: "Default is not a scenario we can rule out." We will default on our debt, and therefore what does that mean?

NIALL FERGUSON: What will happen first is that we’ll default on the commitments made under the Medicare and Social Security systems. That default, the domestic default on our, as it were, domestic creditors, is an almost certain outcome.

The only question is which president takes it? Which president grasps that and admits that we cannot
possibly fulfill those commitments?

So that's how they'll work it: the inevitability con.

And a barrage of academospeak for those who like to think they're smart enough to fool themselves instead of letting someone else do it for them.

Plus a 24x7 teebee spewfest about "wasteful governmental spending", meaning any money not already filched by and for the bankster elite.

Plus the clinching trump card: "What the fuck do you think you're gonna do about it, serfs?" A message they can back up with tasers, pain rays, and whatever else they feel like deploying against us.

We swallowed two stolen elections with hardly a ripple. We swallowed TARP. So, unless things change in unforeseeable ways, we'll swallow this. And America will die without even a whimper.

[The Magistrate]

1. Ferguson, My Friend, is One Ripe Piece Of Work....

Not a bad historian in some respects, but an absolute failure as a thinking human being.

[Jim Sagle]

2. Oh, he thinks well enough. It's the feeling part that eludes him.

[The Magistrate]

4. People Cannot Think Properly If They Cannot Feel, Sir

But we do not disagree here, certainly....

[Jim Sagle]

5. I take your point. Richard Nixon would make a good Exhibit A for that.

[slipslidingaway]

3. As Bush said, there is nothing but pieces of paper in the file. nt

[Hannah Bell]

13. The same could be said of the gov't debt to ruling class bondholders.

But somehow, I don't think they'd see it that way.

Bottom line: they want more, so the people have to take less, because they own the big guns.

Fuck the vampires.

[JDPriestly]

6. Very few elderly people have enough money to survive without

Medicare and Social Security. So, if the government reneges on Social Security and Medicare, it will still have to provide for elderly people. Defaulting will not work unless the government thinks it is going to allow elderly Americans to die from hunger, cold and lack of medical care. Any government that would allow elderly people to die in misery will be quickly tossed out of office one way or the other.

[Greyhound]

10. We already allow that, it's just a matter of scale. n/t

[JDPriestly]

14. Individual Social Security payments for the most part are very small

They are just barely enough to get by on for most people.

[Odin2005]

16. And us disabled people who get SSI or SSDI.

[jtrockville]

7. So the "full faith and credit of the US government" means NOTHING?

[Ghost Dog]

11. Bingo.

:(

[philly_bob]

8. CONFUSED: Who or what is "the Village?" n/t

[merkins]

15. The Villagers

On The Origins And Meaning Of The Term, “The Villagers”

[philly_bob]

19. Thx. Synonym for Beltway Establishment Insiders w/ small town mindset. /nt

[Overseas]

9. I detest Niall Feguson too.

And I fear the cruel attitudes he embodies.

That right wing cruelty of looking as social spending as dispensable, before touching the rampant war profiteering we've been through. Without even a preamble about our nation being bankrupted by wars of choice.

[Hannah Bell]

12. The arrogance of those people rivals that of any wig-wearing French royal.

They deserve pitchforks & tar.

They're fucking thieves & gangsters.

[Odin2005]

17. That Neo-Liberal right-wing gas-bag can go fuck himself!

[Yupster]

18. My opinion

Starting in a couple of years the social security system will start to run a deficit. At that point, the social security trust fund will be folded into the general budget of the United States since it will no longer serve the purpose of disguising the size of the federal budget deficit.

Once the trust fund has been folded into the general budget, the bonds will dissappear as it doesn't make sense for the federal budget to own its own bonds. The asset and liability will cancel themselves out and magically, the social security trust fund will be gone.

Then congress will decide what benefits it can payout over the long term and the bendpoint formula will be adjusted to reflect that reality.