If Social Security Had Been In Private Accounts The Stock Market Drop Could Have Been A Disaster

Who's to blame for the biggest financial catastrophe of our time? There are plenty of culprits, but one candidate for lead perp is former Sen. Phil Gramm. Eight years ago, as part of a decades-long anti-regulatory crusade, Gramm pulled a sly legislative maneuver that greased the way to the multibillion-dollar subprime meltdown. Yet has Gramm been banished from the corridors of power? Reviled as the villain who bankrupted Middle America? Hardly. Now [he's] a well-paid executive at a Swiss bank.

Foreclosure Phil
 
Phil Gramm led the effort to block measures curtailing deceptive or predatory lending, which was just beginning to result in a jump in home foreclosures that would undermine the financial markets. He advanced legislation that fractured oversight of Wall Street while knocking down Depression-era barriers that restricted the rise and reach of financial conglomerates.

And he pushed through a provision that ensured virtually no regulation of the complex financial instruments known as derivatives, including credit swaps, contracts that would encourage risky investment practices at Wall Street’s most venerable institutions and spread the risks, like a virus, all around the world.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/business/economy/17gramm.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
 
Of course, there are stock market ups and downs, but private investors are pretty good in what they do. They have much more information then private citizens, like myself.

When market dropped last week, I lost some money on regular investments but I actually doubled my money overall because of leveraged investments. If I can do it, I am pretty sure, they did pretty well too.
 
The feds bailed out the banks. How did they bail out the stock market?
If you're so opposed to bail outs, then why don't you vote out the politicians who approve them. You know, like Hillary and Obama?


OOOpps, I'm sure its an oversight but you did forget to mention Bush....oh, and by the way, do you remember that scum bucket Phil Gramm????


As chairman of the Senate Banking Committee from 1995 through 2000, Phil Gramm was Washington's most prominent and outspoken champion of financial deregulation. He played a leading role in writing and pushing through Congress the 1999 repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial banks from Wall Street. He also inserted a key provision into the 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act that exempted over-the-counter derivatives like credit-default swaps from regulation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Credit-default swaps took down AIG, which has cost the U.S. $150 billion thus far.

What would the point be of mentioning Bush? Bush is gone. Is Obama and Hillary gone? So, mentioning someone who we can not vote out, when talking about voting out people who supported the bailout, has what benefit? Not the brightest candle are you?

While I'm not a big fan of Phil Gramm, Glass-Steagall Act would not have prevented anything. The price bubble started before the repeal of Glass-Steagall.

Further, Credit Default swaps didn't take down anything. That's an ignorant perspective. There were trillions of dollars worth of Credit Default swaps, the vast vast majority did not fail. Only the ones placed on Sub-prime loans, which failed, ended up being a problem.

This is like looking at one car that has a bad wheel, and saying all cars need banned. They have bad wheels. Very dumb.
 
Zero sum neophytes have always been losers.....so I can see how that would be your only perspective.


True.....Its actually MAGIC......Try placing your portfolio under your pillow and the "market-fairy" will make it grow.

Oh my goodness! IT WORKED! I have 25% more money than I put in! Amazing! Or no... it's how it works. Never mind.

Oddly, the same fairy didn't appear over in Greece, and now everyone is leaving the whole country.

Why didn't your Social Security fairy go to Greece?
 
Zero sum neophytes have always been losers.....so I can see how that would be your only perspective.


True.....Its actually MAGIC......Try placing your portfolio under your pillow and the "market-fairy" will make it grow.

Oh my goodness! IT WORKED! I have 25% more money than I put in! Amazing! Or no... it's how it works. Never mind.

Oddly, the same fairy didn't appear over in Greece, and now everyone is leaving the whole country.

Why didn't your Social Security fairy go to Greece?
Yes, and how many people will fail to succeed in surviving these crashes without damage? How many will have enough or find someone trusted?
 

There's only one thing that causes financial crises and that is poor financial stewardship.

Poor financial stewardship is the result of either ignorance of sound financial principle... OKA: The natural laws of mathematics and objective reasoning, or the rejection of those principles despite such being known to you... .

Now of the two species of reasoning represented by American conservatism; which intrinsically recognizes, respects, defends and adheres to the principles of nature, OKA: God's law, and that known as Left-think, AKA: Relativism, on which Leftism rest... WHICH ONE REJECTS THE LAWS OF NATURE regarding Objectivity?

Here's a clue:

"Relativism is the doctrine which holds that knowledge, truth, and morality exist only in relation to one's cultural, societal, historical and personal context and, as such, can never be the result of soundly reasoned absolutes." The Dictionary.

Relativism axiomatically rejects the very existence of objectivity; which is essential to truth, that we find that such precludes the means for Left-think to serve justice.

With truth being essential to trust and, both: truth and trust being critical to the establishment of a soundly reasoned morality and, because a soundly reasoned morality is essential to Justice... it becomes clear to reasonable people, that Relativism can never serve justice, nor any other function of objective reasoning, such as the sound stewardship of public funds.
 
These threads are utterly ridiculous.

Every time the stock market drops, some shrill leftist posts one of these threads about how much social security would have lost. However, they totally ignore how much SS would have made over time had it invested in stocks.
 
What would the point be of mentioning Bush? Bush is gone. Is Obama and Hillary gone? So, mentioning someone who we can not vote out, when talking about voting out people who supported the bailout, has what benefit? Not the brightest candle are you?

In other words, "...don't mention or try to learn from past screw-ups.....Bush is gone.....TARP is just a bad memory, etc."

And, an idiot like yourself has the nerve to actually state that I am not the brightest candle?
 
Yes, and how many people will fail to succeed in surviving these crashes without damage? How many will have enough or find someone trusted?

In the right wing "future", picture a 90 year old woman in a nursing home, trying to access the DOW to see if she'll get kicked out of the home when there's some dips.........Or try to tell the bastards that run the nursing home, "....wait, I was assured that the market always bounced back..."

Also picture the emergence of a bunch of shysters who will "manage" nursing home-bound people's market portfolio.
 
Yeah, good think you warned the Greeks about that.... their system end up so much better.

So, in your half-brained delusions you "think" that the only problem with the Greek economy is that people there weren't "smart enough" to gamble as you claim to do???

Where do these right wing morons pop up? Does someone actually turn on the computer for them?
 
Phil Gramm led the effort to block measures curtailing deceptive or predatory lending, which was just beginning to result in a jump in home foreclosures that would undermine the financial markets. He advanced legislation that fractured oversight of Wall Street while knocking down Depression-era barriers that restricted the rise and reach of financial conglomerates.

And he pushed through a provision that ensured virtually no regulation of the complex financial instruments known as derivatives, including credit swaps, contracts that would encourage risky investment practices at Wall Street’s most venerable institutions and spread the risks, like a virus, all around the world.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/business/economy/17gramm.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Absolute NONSENSE...

Predatory Lending is merely lending which rejects the actuarial lending principle which exist within the laws of nature that govern human behavior and which sustain sound lending.

Now of the two sets of ideas:

1- The Philosophy of Americanism, OKA: Conserativism.

2- Left-think.

Which is it that rejects the laws of nature that govern human behavior?
 
Yeah, good think you warned the Greeks about that.... their system end up so much better.

So, in your half-brained delusions you "think" that the only problem with the Greek economy is that people there weren't "smart enough" to gamble as you claim to do???

Where do these right wing morons pop up? Does someone actually turn on the computer for them?

Greece's economy failed due to the rejection of sound economic stewardship. A trait which is EXCLUSIVELY common to the Ideological Left that has LONG governed Greece.
 
Well, no shit.
If Social Security Had Been In Private Accounts The Stock Market Drop Could Have Been A Disaster
The stock market continued a period of volatility on Monday. Media reports sounded the alarm as the DOW opened 1,000 points down and other indexes took huge hits, only to climb back up a bit later in the day. While that performance, which had some people calling it black Monday, may have knocked a good deal of money out of people’s 401(k) retirement accounts, Social Security benefits remain by and large untouched by such fluctuations.

Some Republicans, however, are interested in changing that.

In June, presidential candidate Jeb Bush said that he thinks the next president will have to try to privatize Social Security. Others have gotten behind the idea as well: Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) drafted a plan in 2013 that included partial privatization, and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is in favor of using private accounts. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) has included privatization in his budget blueprints.

The market drop, and ones before, expose the dangers of such a plan, which usually entails diverting some or all of the money workers contribute to Social Security through their paychecks into private investment accounts. That would put individuals in charge of making smart enough investment choices in the market to make big enough returns to support themselves in retirement.

But the reality is that’s not within reach for most individual people. During a market rout like Monday’s, many people will panic and sell. “We know a lot of people do what economists say is irrational, they sell at a low point,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center on Economic and Policy Research. Research shows that the best thing to do during a downturn is to hold out if possible. But that’s not how most people will react. “People see something like this and go, ‘I better get out,'” Baker said. “When they see the market start to go up, they say, ‘I better buy in,’ and then they’ve lost a lot.”

This is one of the big problems with privatizing Social Security: individual investors don’t tend to be that savvy in chasing higher returns. “A lot of people make wrong decisions,” Baker said. This is even true when it comes to retirement planning: Many people leave money on the table with their 401(k)s by not taking advantage of employer matches or cash out when they switch jobs and incur taxes. The point of Social Security contributions is to make saving for retirement mandatory, he pointed out. But “if you do that and then just tell people to do whatever you want [with the money], then a lot of people will make mistakes and end up with not very much in retirement.”

On a larger level, putting people’s Social Security contributions into private accounts makes them far more exposed to the irrationality of the market. “What’s beautiful about Social Security is that in the long the return workers get on contributions is linked to productivity growth and wage growth,” said Monique Morrissey, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “Whereas markets are notoriously volatile and often behave in ways that are not based on the fundamental strength and weakness of the economy.”
Actually, their money would be safer than in the hands of a corrupt Congress.
 
Now of the two sets of ideas:

1- The Philosophy of Americanism, OKA: Conserativism.

2- Left-think.

Which is it that rejects the laws of nature that govern human behavior?

You may be dumber than a box of nails.....but, I have to admit you're funny.
 
Phil Gramm led the effort to block measures curtailing deceptive or predatory lending, which was just beginning to result in a jump in home foreclosures that would undermine the financial markets. He advanced legislation that fractured oversight of Wall Street while knocking down Depression-era barriers that restricted the rise and reach of financial conglomerates.

And he pushed through a provision that ensured virtually no regulation of the complex financial instruments known as derivatives, including credit swaps, contracts that would encourage risky investment practices at Wall Street’s most venerable institutions and spread the risks, like a virus, all around the world.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/business/economy/17gramm.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Absolute NONSENSE...

Predatory Lending is merely lending which rejects the actuarial lending principle which exist within the laws of nature that govern human behavior and which sustain sound lending.

Now of the two sets of ideas:

1- The Philosophy of Americanism, OKA: Conserativism.

2- Left-think.

Which is it that rejects the laws of nature that govern human behavior?

You may be dumber than a box of nails.....but, I have to admit you're funny.

Your concession is duly noted and summarily accepted.

You did the best you could... such as it was.
 
Zero sum neophytes have always been losers.....so I can see how that would be your only perspective.


True.....Its actually MAGIC......Try placing your portfolio under your pillow and the "market-fairy" will make it grow.

Oh my goodness! IT WORKED! I have 25% more money than I put in! Amazing! Or no... it's how it works. Never mind.

Oddly, the same fairy didn't appear over in Greece, and now everyone is leaving the whole country.

Why didn't your Social Security fairy go to Greece?
Yes, and how many people will fail to succeed in surviving these crashes without damage? How many will have enough or find someone trusted?

Again.... we already have a solution for that. When you are given a choice... if you are seriously too stupid, too moronic, too spineless and scared to invest wisely.... ok.... have one of the investment options be "Federal Government Bonds".

You can have all your retirement money in money losing Federal Bonds.

How is that any worse than the way it is currently? It's exactly what you have now, only now you don't have the option to do better.

We want the option to do better. You want to live impoverished for life? Great. Dump your money in T-Bills. It will be no worse than the impoverished Social Security income check we have today.

This is a win-win..... well you lose.... but you apparently want to lose, so it's a lose-win for you, and a win-win for us.

Everyone is happy under my plan. You get to keep your impoverishment, and the rest of us get to retire wealthy.

That's a good plan in my book.
 

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