OMG I just got it: Social Security privatization was meant to forestall this meltdown

[Recursion]

And it hits me.

Four years ago or so, Republicans wanted to privatize social security because they knew damn well what was on the horizon. They wanted FICA levies to go into the common market to shore up these phony instruments in time for their cronies to get out.

God these guys are some schlameels....

[sarcasmo]

1. Snake oil salesman, who were trying to bankrupt the country.

[grahamhgreen]

19. Uh, have bankrupted the country - morally and financially with their 'greed is good' 'ownership' cra

p

[katty]

70. yeah, ownership "for them" only-rape and pillage

[tblue]

2. Is there any end to their malice and greed??????

[central scrutinizer]

3. ponzi scheme

as long as you keep getting suckers to buy into the bottom tier, the ones at the top keep raking it in.

[alfredo]

41. Privatization of SS was to pull in another generation of suckers. Ask those

who got burned in the dot com collapse. The cost to the marks when they get burned will be more severe because they won't have that "SSI safety net" the dot com investors had.

[lurky]

4. I've been thinking the same thing.

:cheers:

[Cosmocat]

33. I was on that like flies on shiite ...

I didn't forsee future downturns, but I knew for a fact the reason they came up with the privitization scam -these MFers don't do ANYTHING unless they are turning a dollar with it. NO DOUBT in my mind they were chomping at the bit to flood the speculative markets with a massive influx of SS monies.

NO DOUBT.

[lurky]

34. Yep, and all that money going into the market

would drive up stock prices = more gravy for the Wall Street pigs.

[NYC_SKP]

5. Yes, bingo. Also, that Iraq thing didn't go as planned.

I think PNAC expected us to be a big player in the middle east by now.

Abandon ship.

Gold bars and diamonds first.

[truedelphi]

72. Halliburton stock is WAY UP.

So whenever i am trying to decide whether Iraq was planned to be chaotic or not, I decide that it was.

After all, George Jr had almost all of his Daddy's war men telling him that about 300,000 troops were needed on the ground in Iraq to stabiliaze the country after the surge.

And in all the "guy in the street" interviews, some of them from "indie" stations that DID NOT want the war, the Iraqi civilians were saying the same thing - "Thank you America for coming here nad getting rid of Saddam Hussein - but please make sure that enough of your forces are here to keep the lid on secular uprisings. PLEASE"

[NYC_SKP]

78. And good reason that this war shall never end.... nt

[ingac70]

6. I was think about that this morning...

everything that is happening now was on purpose, and was suppose to happen much later.




They wanted to reduce government by bankrupting it, taking the money and running.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

10. Dead right on

Just this, just the idea of what would have happened to Social Security if those lunatics had gotten their way, THAT is what Obama should be screaming about RIGHT NOW.

It's an absolutely horrendous scenario, what might have happened.

And Grover Norquist can blow me.

[Hannah Bell]

42. to china: the bushes have been all over that since the 80s.

big profits producing there & selling to richer countries - windfall profits on slave labor.

Prescott Sheldon Bush, Jr.: brother to George Herbert Walker Bush

- Phillips Academy, Andover and Yale.

- Founder, Prescott Bush Resources, Ltd. 1985.
- 9 years with Pan Am, 33 years with Johnson & Higgins, international insurance brokers.


"Mr. Bush has been engaged in business projects with China since
1983 and has advised such companies as Anheuser-Busch and ADM
concerning their business development in China."

"He worked closely with Chinese conglomerates such as Cereal Oil Food
Import/Export Corporation (gov't-owned conglomerate, COFCO) and
Norinco (vehicles, machinery, electric/optical, explosives, defense
mfg). He is also a consultant for Wanxiang America (automotive
parts)."

Founding member & Chair of Board of Directors, U.S.-China Chamber of
Commerce.

Shanghai International Golf and Country Club in Shanghai developer &
Vice Chairman.

Chairman of the Advisory Board of Global Access, Incorporated.

International Advisory Board of the Culture and Civilization of
China.

Advisory Committee of AmeriCares (international relief organization).

Citizens Democracy Corps.

United Equity Holdings.

1989-1992, U.S. delegation on the U.S.-Hong Kong Economic
Cooperation Committee.

[maxpower]

69. Read "The Shock Doctrine" if you haven't yet

This is all part of Friedman's philosophy. This book should be mandatory reading. It is literally shocking.


Peace

[Liberal Veteran]

7. That's an abstute observation....

I'm impressed and it is very plausible.

[Gregorian]

8. Interesting.

Recommending.

[Generic Other]

9. Makes sense doesn't it?

They wanted it all.

[Oregone]

11. I doubt it

They just wanted to subsidize big business with the funds rather than managing them responsibly.

[ingac70]

12. The same thing that is going off now...

woulda just happened much later if SS had gotten privatized.

[Oregone]

17. Well, they don't normally see the consequences of their shitty policies

For them its all about making money NOW

[grahamhgreen]

21. What is your net worth?

[Oregone]

37. Pretty low...not sure why is relevant...

I still owe a big chunk on my home and don't have much in the bank.

I just see privatization (in many forms including this one), as an attempt to divert otherwise public funds into the private sector, as a means to redistribute wealth to the upper classes and reward companies that snuggle up to the elected officials.

Privatization of SS would surely lead to a major surge of funds into the private sector, boosting shareholder's portfolio's. In the short term, it would be a boon to the corporate fat cats, unless they irresponsibly steered their businesses off a cliff with shitty practices (unethical practices that I believe they pursue with the intention to get rich and richer, without clearly thinking of their dumb ass consequences).

I think the percentage of people looking to bankrupt the government to eliminate the New Deal is rather small, and consists of fringe radicals.

[Two Americas]

52. disgusting concept, I always thought

What is the "net worth" of a human being? How do you measure that?

[Breeze54]

13. Ronald Reagan was an early advocate of personal accounts for Social Security.

Ronald Reagan on Social Security

http://www.issues2000.org/Celeb/Ronald_Reagan_Social_Security.htm

President of the U.S., 1981-1989; Republican Governor (CA)


Wanted to privatize retirement, but never had opportunity

Social Security was always more tar baby than Teflon for Reagan. He told me when he was governor of California that Barry Goldwater’s campaign had demonstrated that Republicans could not safely discuss the issue, but Reagan could not stop talking about it. I have no doubt that he shared the view that Social Security was a Ponzi scheme. He was intrigued with the idea of a voluntary plan that would have allowed workers to make their own investments. This idea would have undermined the system by depriving Social Security of the contributions of millions of the nation’s highest-paid workers. In 1976 he said that Social Security “could have made a provision for those who could do better on their own” and suggested that such recipients be allowed to leave the program upon showing that “they had made provisions for their non-earning years.” This declaration sent shudders through the ranks of Reagan’s political advisers, who knew his true feelings about Social Security.“

Source: The Role of a Lifetime, by Lou Cannon, p. 243 Jul 2, 1991 http://www.issues2000.org/Role_of_a_Lifetime.htm

[Skittles]

14. Reagan advocated everything that fucked people over

he was a true evil bastard; I will NEVER understand how he fooled so many people

[BadgerKid]

15. Bravo!

I think you've got a winner there.

[SammyWinstonJack]

16. Well...

http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/in_politics.html?q=in_politics.html

[high density]

Privatization doesn't mean it would all go in the stock market or junk bonds

But it does mean that firms like Lehman would be able to charge 2% fees to people to "manage" their social security assets.

[grahamhgreen]

22. Oh yes it does - eventually they would weasle and steal it all, baby

[high density]

23. No it doesn't

People in their retirement should not have a lot of exposure to the stock market, and there's no way a "privatization" of SS would force (or allow) this.

[DCKit]

38. Market Manipulation

They could and they would have if given the chance. Further, with the fantasy based accounting scheme the current maladministration runs, we wouldn't have known about it until SS was in the dumper - after all, who could have knows about the risks of the market?

And if you refuse to believe a single company could manipulate the markets, look at what happened to the price of oil over the weekend when only two of the major players were suspended from the game. Without their support/collusion, the other speculators are running scared and pulling out.

[Hannah Bell]

43. yes, it does. look at the privatization plans floated over the years - that's exactly

what was offered.

[high density]

60. I doubt it, because that makes no sense

The fact is people should get more conservative with their investments as they get closer to retirement. That means less exposure to the stock market. Any "privatization" plan would recognize this or it would be laughed out of congress.

[NuttyFluffers]

66. :D out of which congress?

:)

to understand the criminally insane, sanity is a handicap.

[harun]

64. Where else you think they will let it go?

[grahamhgreen]

18. BINGO!!!!!

It's just like them selling you the gas guzzling SUV's....

[proud patriot]

20. makes sense to me

:think:

[fla nocount]

24. The few have salivating over what's owed to the many for a long time.

Remember when DeLay said that the purpose of this administration was to undo the FDR programs? Not just SS, but the whole social network and regulatory laws on business and banking.

[fla nocount]

25. Delete-Dupe

[applegrove]

26. And with millions of naive investors the rich people could have gotten rid of

"old stock" and "sub-prime banking stock" and put their money elsewhere. Think how much of an instant profit it would have been for someone with a huge stock portfolio to have milllions of Americans suddenly wanting into the stock market.

All it is is a transfer of wealth from the middle class to the rich. What Republicanism is all about.

[Nikki Stone1]

27. You just got that one, huh?

:)

[Recursion]

29. It's one of those "obvious in retrospect" things

Back when we thought (or at least naive people like me did) that Enron was an outlier rather than the type of the new business model.

[Nikki Stone1]

31. It's globalism, and a transfer of wealth to the already wealthy.

This is why greed is one of the 7 deadly sins.

[rufus dog]

28. The same thing hit me today

Get there hands on billions more and it would have bought them another four years.

[bdamomma]

30. Social Security Carlin said they will take that away from us too.

is that the tipping point.

[SammyWinstonJack]

36. Well they will certainly try. It's the last of the New Deal that the repugs never wanted but love

to raid. Gore's lockbox was the real deal and bu$h hasn't been able to get his greedy hands on it...yet! McSame will do it, if "elected".

[live love laugh]

32. Sounds right. W-O-W. Never occurred to me. nt

[femrap]

35. And don't forget...

they want to create a society of only very rich and the poor. Remember, these dudes are sadistic sociopaths who enjoy seeing people suffer...they want us starving in the streets.

[Not Sure]

39. Funny, I was thinking this a little while ago

while listening to NPR as I took a break from MNF. As they were laying out where the Merrill Lynch and Lehman Bros. chips are falling, I couldn't help but feel lucky the bastards didn't succeed with privatizing SS.

[leftofthedial]

40. duh.

[Hannah Bell]

44. They've been moving toward privatization since Greenspan's "reform" in the 80s.

In 1978, a young Congressional candidate picked up the theme of crisis. Stumping at the Midland Texas Country Club, George W. Bush said:

“ will be bust in 10 years unless there are some changes…The ideal solution would be… to invest the money the way they feel.”8

Like the WMDs, the 1988 Social Security bust never manifested. You’d think Bush would be embarrassed, but 20 years after the crisis-that-wasn’t, he’s still banging the privatization gong.

There’s plenty more scary talk where that came from, a steady stream of policy papers and opinion pieces, dutifully parroted by the media. The think tanks that produce them are funded, not by any grass-roots demanding Social Security reform, but by a handful of big private fortunes, some well-known: Mellon-Scaife9, DuPont10, Coors.11

Other funders are less famous, but their fortunes are equally large. The Koch brothers, inheritors of one of the world’s largest private oil fortunes, fund what’s probably the most important source of privatization propaganda: the Cato Institute.12 Incidentally, George Bush’s sister Doro Bush Koch, is reportedly married to a Koch cousin.13

In 1983, in the wake of another failed attempt to gather public support for privatization, Cato published an influential paper titled “Achieving a Leninist Strategy.”14

The authors start by acknowledging that Social Security is a popular program, so head-on approaches to dismantling it are unlikely to be successful. Instead, they recommend the “Leninist Strategy” of the title. Strange to find libertarian free-marketeers so enthusiastic about a reviled communist, but politics does make strange bedfellows.

Lenin was a political strategist known for super-pragmatism, a proponent of stealth tactics, alliances of convenience, and sleeper cells. He advised a secretive vanguard to help create the conditions for revolution, while lying in wait for the “revolutionary moment” when power could by seized by virtue of the same vanguard’s superior organization and discipline.

This is exactly what the Cato authors recommend in the way of a long-term strategy to take Social Security private. To help create revolutionary conditions, they suggest:

1) Mobilizing a coalition of folks who’d benefit from privatization (banks, investment houses, and other financial institutions).

2) Continuing public “education” aimed at discrediting Social Security and talking up privatization.

3) Creation and promotion of financial savings alternatives (e.g. 401Ks, IRAs) to get people accustomed to using them.

4) Splitting potential coalition supporters of Social Security, such as current and future recipients: “…the strategy must be to propose moving to a private…system in such a way as “to…neutralize…the coalition that supports the existing system.” Thus, older folks would be told their benefits wouldn’t be cut, making them less likely to mobilize to help protect benefits for the young.

All this has happened in the years since.

At the end of the paper, the authors say: “The next Social Security crisis may be further away than many people believe…it could be many years before the conditions are such that a radical reform of Social Security is possible. But then, as Lenin well knew, to be a successful revolutionary, one must also be patient and consistently plan for real reform.”

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Hannah%20Bell/1

[dmr]

48. Thanks for posting this link

I was looking for this thread just a few weeks ago, and couldn't find it. It was/is an excellent thread.

Thanks again.
:)

[MadrasT]

45. Aw, shit... I never made that connection.

Geez.

Every time I think I know the depth of their depravity... aw... geez...

Must. Think about. This.

[Dan]

46. Bingo!

[Oak2004]

47. Right!!!

They were in deep doo doo and needed an influx of cash. So naturally, they wanted our future,

[Hekate]

49. Sadly, SS privatization was meant as just another way to make sure government does not work ...

... for thee and me. Remember Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist? The disgusting duo who came to Washington with the mission of undoing ever New Deal and Great Society program ever hatched?

If it were not for Social Security, many people would never be able to retire at all. Before SS came along as a societal safety net, the biggest pocket of abject poverty was old people who could not work any more. There are an awful lot of workers who make too little to ever save for retirement -- not ever. It's paycheck to paycheck their whole lives.

When this malarkey came along about "ownership" of one's own retirement account, and what nifty dividends workers could make on investments in stocks, I thought of those workers, and the multitudes who don't have a clue how to "invest". The secretary, the janitor, the hairdresser, the list goes on forever. It includes me. With all my college education, all I understand about investment is my house (Mr. H and I paid it off) and my bank account (divided into CDs and an IRA). Everything else scares me.

The whole notion is just another Republi-con crock. Studies have shown that money held in Social Security funds grows more steadily, and in the end produces more, than equal funds invested in stocks and whatnot. Not flashy. Just safe.

Hekate

[struggle4progress]

50. Rs have been pushing SS privatization for decades. Their basic idea has been that all that

cash would translate immediately into trades and brokerage fees and higher stock prices -- so the financial markets could grab a quick profit

Of course, when an inevitable retirement wave came, the sell-offs would translate into more trades and brokerage fees -- and lower stock prices

A nice set-up: we suckers would all have to buy high now and sell low later (when we really really the money back) -- a series of magic moments for the market big boys

[closeupready]

73. You've got it exactly right. End of thread.

;)

[lamp_shade]

51. kick

[liberalla]

53. Not only forestall this meltdown, but that's a lot of money to

'leave on the table'... they're so disappointed -- they didn't get to steal it ALL!

Poor heartbroken bastards... :cry:

______________________________________


*** OTOH, I've heard it speculated that they have already taken/used the SS money, but we just don't know it. They've kept it hidden. Would that be possible to truly hide it from everyone?

[leveymg]

54. No, it was meant to inflate the bubble further, but the blowout would have happened anyway. Only

the burst would have been bigger, wiping everything out, including the currency.

Read Krugman's essay on "Pangloss Value" (the implicit governmental guarantee of market values) that led to the Asia Crisis of '97. http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/DISINTER.html

[HamdenRice]

55. No it wasn't. Almost no one on Wall St saw this coming

Billionaires don't lose billions unless they've made some very very serious mistakes. Lehman, Bear Stearns and AIG did not see this coming.

[nichomachus]

56. But, they told us they could handle our retirement funds better than the government

[elehhhhna]

57. I have said this for 7 YEARS. We would take the losses THAT way.

[SoCalDem]

58. 401-ks will soon be 101-ks

The morphing of defined benefit pensions (once the norm for a lifetime of work at a single employer) was shifted to employee's own "responsibility, via 401-k..The "pensions" that remain these days are mostly defined contribution....with no "promises" of anything real at the end of the line...

401-ks were sold to the American worker as the BEST way to "have control" over your own money, but actual research shows that what most people end up with, is far from being adequate to augment their retirement all that much...

And since that money is invested in the "market", the money is not all that "safe"..

U.S. Workers are Boosting Their 401(k) Contributions
http://www.wwj.com/pages/2950628.php?

Despite the fact that the economy has seen better days, retirement savers ramped up their plan contributions this year, according to a new study by Fidelity Investments.

Fidelity says the average contribution among those who participated in the same retirement-savings plan both this year and last rose 7 percent to $3,512 through June of this year. That’s up from $3,283 in the first six months of 2007.

Michael Doshier, vice president of marketing for Fidelity's Retirement Services division, says one reason for the higher average contributions may be that boomers are moving “en masse” through the system, increasing their contributions as they get closer to retirement. “There is a direct correlation between age and willingness ... to participate," he says.

When you look at all of the 11.5 million plan participants in the study, the average contribution rose just 1.4 percent, to $3,187 from $3,142 in the first half of 2007. That figure is lower than the 7 percent figure cited for consistent savers, Fidelity says. That is because the entire universe of its plans includes employees joining plans for the first time, workers retiring out of plans, new companies adding their plans to Fidelity's lineup and others taking their plans to different providers. Even though workers have been contributing more, the up-and-down stock market has pushed average account balances down. For those who stayed in the same plan both years, the average balance dropped 1 percent to $71,500 in June 2008, from $72,000 in June 2007.

The drop was steeper - a 7.5 percent decline to $64,000, from $69,200 - for the total pool of plans. But that includes new contributors, as well as people leaving the system. Only 9 percent of workers participating in 401(k) plans contributed the maximum allowable $15,500 at the end of 2007, though that portion hit 38 percent among highly compensated employees, according to the Fidelity study.

[tom_paine]

59. Yep. Consider the invention of the 401(k) in that light and see where it leads...

Personally, I happen to like the general idea of 401(k) as a supplement to Social Security. Like much of the rest of Amerika's degraded and corrupt fonancial sector, the problem is not so much the suystem as the people who have taken control and diconnected all the "burglar alarms".

But back to 401(k)'s. How badly off would the stock market be today...how unmasked, if every two weeks, tens of billions of dollars didn't pour in automatically "buy. buy. buy." which is the point of the 401(k)...long-term savings.

Now consider it in the hands of the corrupt Bushies and their pals...the larger pictyure that you brought up.

How much of the masking that blinds the Amerikan Subject Populace to the true, drastic nature of the situation AT THIS VERY MINUTE (let alone a year from now) is bought with that weekly tens of billions of dollars?

A lot. Gotta give it to the Bushies in the areas of innovative cruelty and evil genius.

They makes us pay for our own blinders, our own bridles and saddles...

[barbiegeek]

61. Privatize Social Security

Getting rid of Social Security or privatizing it is just a way to dismantle FDR (Roosevelt's initiatives). They have been fighting to destroy everything he built for 65 years.

[The Backlash Cometh]

62. They're always looking for leverage.

As long as it's someone else's money they're gambling with. There were early signs. Forcing the Florida Teacher's union to supplement Enron, when Enron's stock were tanking, for example.

[blossomstar]

63. Recommend

It's hard to go to the places in our brains that these scoundrels do, but this is most likely right on.

[NuttyFluffers]

65. i'm so glad you got it. :)

please explain to others. then they may see the light and help bring a more gradual transitioning for our near future. otherwise we'll go in the same direction, but the turbulence will likely induce soiled panties. and i do not like to do that much laundry.

when i try to explain, i am often too far ahead of the curve to sound sane. so i have curtailed myself into a little rabbit hole Wonderland. it is cozy, but the queen is really off her head... yet the house of cards should be coming down soon anyways, though. so this might be a good thing in the end, as long as i don't eat and smoke the wrong things.

[tjwash]

67. But...wern't the tax cuts supposed to prevent this meltdown in the first place?

:mad:

[Heather MC]

68. A blind man could see this coming

Housing Market, Housing pricing can't possibly keep going up if incomes don't

Mortgage, They kept inventing new was for a non-qualified person to get a loan.
Adjustable rate mortgages are better suited for wealthy people or people who can handle the sudden financial up swing, not people who are trying to by a house they can not afford otherwise.

Gas Prices, Clearly the higher the gas prices go, that drives the prices of just about everything else, food travel, sending a package fed ex.

Imagine the fix we would be in if they had gotten rid of the US postal service, and made that Private
it would cost 20 buck just to send the check to pay your mortgage, assuming you are not on auto pay.

[MrsCorleone]

74. Absolutely, Heather. They saw this coming from a mile away & it

was plain as day to those paying attention. What really ticks me off is that the multinationals & their repub monkeys have successfully set the stage for a future democratic administration &/or congress to fail.

When Cheney chimed, "deficits don't matter," it was pretty clear that the repubs were going to loot the Treasury dry for their corporate owners, leaving the U.S. an empty, pathetic shell of a country, while the well connected slink off-shore with our tax dollars.

Mission accomplished!

[zappaman]

71. BUSH is a success!

Worst president in history?
Absolutely...if you are 98 percent of the planet.
But if you are part of the richest 2 percent in the world?
He's done wonders!
He and his evil partners have managed to loot this country like it has never been looted before.
As far as the corporations(and the pigs running them) are concerned, his only failure had been not privitizing social security.
If McBush gets in, you will see this high up on his agenda.
Why would they be happy with, say, 20 billion in their pocket if there is another 1 billion out there?
It's disgusting what these snakes have managed to do.
And if they steal another one, we, as a country, are doomed.
You hear about addictions all the time.
Gambling addiction...drug addiction...sex addiction....but NEVER anything about money addiction.
Greed knows no bounds with these guys. They don't want most of the wealth in the world...they want it ALL.

[mike_c]

75. either way, it amounts to the same thing-- public money shoring up private greed....

But yes, I agree-- the SS scheme was intended to put a better face on it than the present public "bail out."

[HughMoran]

76. Yes, it was to pour YOUR money into the private sector.

I knew that was the plan.

[kath]

77. They're not schlemiels - they are deliberately evil and conniving.

Yiddish lesson - A schlemiel is a "dolt who is a habitual bungler", chump, fool, etc. No evil connotations here.

Conniving slimy greedy fucking assholes sounds better to me! :-)