McCain Would Privatize Social Security

[Care4all]

all i gotta say is THANK GOD Social security is not a privatized system and in the stock market NOW.....!!!!!

 

[Care4all]

my 401k's in the market are shit at this point....thank goodness those are small amounts, plus the house value going down....before you know it, i will have to come out of my early retirement....and that's without the tax burden or devaluation of the dollar that is going to take place with the ONE TRILLION the treasury is saying they need to infuse in to the market.... (

 

[editec]

Where did I say that. You guys have a real problem with reading to much into what people said.

What I did say is that the Dems answer to all our problems is to throw money at them, and create more Government programs. I did not say anything about who created the problems in the first place.

Learn to actually read what people said bud.

If that was not your point my apologies.

However you did post

Of course that is all the Dems know how to do. It is their answer to everything. Throw money at it, and create new Government programs.

Get used to it if Obama wins and the Dems maintain control of Both houses of Congress, because by the time they are done this country will closely resemble Russia in say the 1920's.

Sure in hell sounds like you want to lay the cause of the problems America is facing ONLY at the foot of the Desm to me.

Where is you complaint about the mistakes made by Republicans?

It seems not to be there.

Hence my belief that you are nothing more than a partian fool.

 

[AllieBaba]

Do you think the average American has any clue on how to invest? Or even the time to learn how?

I think the recent mortgage crises answers that question.

Ah, here we go with "Americans are too stupid to....." in this case, handle their own money.

The recent mortgage crisis didn't happen because of "average" Americans. It happened because of pressure brought to bear by DEMOCRATS on the money lending industry to provide low-interest loans to people who weren't qualified to obtain them otherwise...read young, underemployed, undereducated, unstable and largely first-generation Americans.

Thanks, Dems! You guys really know how to handle our money!

 

[Anguille]

Ah, here we go with "Americans are too stupid to....." in this case, handle their own money.

The recent mortgage crisis didn't happen because of "average" Americans. It happened because of pressure brought to bear by DEMOCRATS on the money lending industry to provide low-interest loans to people who weren't qualified to obtain them otherwise...read young, underemployed, undereducated, unstable and largely first-generation Americans.

Thanks, Dems! You guys really know how to handle our money!

The only pressure brought on money lenders was their own avarice and greed.

And yes, most Americans are too busy working and raising kids and doing what ever they do to learn how to be successful stockbrokers.

 

[midcan5]

we had this argument already and your link is easily rebutted. For one the performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average is a compilation of a mere 20 U.S. stocks yet this is the second time you've trotted that article out as some kind of "proof"

The figures don't lie in this example, you can argue with it all you want you still lose. You could do much worse. And SS is social insurance, it is not just for your retirement, it is to help those who are in need. Best thing we ever did for each other. It is solvent and doing Ok. The cost to maintain it is minimal. If the speculators had hold of this money it would be - it would be - can you guess, it would be what we have now - a meltdown, a mess. And why do you think your employer would match the contribution if they didn't have to? Many corporations have already abandoned pensions and they surely care not one iota for your future.

 

[Mad Scientist]

Awesome. Maybe we can fix the system before it becomes another Fannie Mae.

Ding ding ding! We have a winnah!

Seems to me you can do only three things with Social Security;
Raise Taxes
Cut Benefits
Socialize it.

Seeing howze the gubmint screws up every other program they have, the only choice is to privatize.

 

[Diuretic]

Since government belongs to the people if one is to get screwed it is best to do it yourself...

By the way, a man walks into see his doctor. The doctor takes one look at him and says, "you have to stop masturbating." The man says, "why!?" The doctor says, "so I can examine you."

Sorry, it just seemed to fit...

A Groucho Marxist?

 

[RetiredGySgt]

"a portfolio we control" ???

I suppose you own the deed to the Brooklyn Bridge.

So you would rather continue to put money in a slush fund that is spent every year? No savings, no investment, just IOU's from a Government YOU say is bankrupt. Good plan indeed.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

If that was not your point my apologies.

However you did post



Sure in hell sounds like you want to lay the cause of the problems America is facing ONLY at the foot of the Desm to me.

Where is you complaint about the mistakes made by Republicans?

It seems not to be there.

Hence my belief that you are nothing more than a partian fool.

As opposed to YOU claiming the "neocons" did it all, ya you are a font of sanity in a sea of fools.

 

[midcan5]

Seeing howze the gubmint screws up every other program they have, the only choice is to privatize.

A rather odd conclusion given the times. Can you say Enron, Worldcom etc etc etc etc etc and guess who is bailing out many of the others who do so well when left on their own. Any guesses.


"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone." John Maynard Keynes

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." John Kenneth Galbraith

 

[Skull Pilot]

The figures don't lie in this example, you can argue with it all you want you still lose. You could do much worse. And SS is social insurance, it is not just for your retirement, it is to help those who are in need. Best thing we ever did for each other. It is solvent and doing Ok. The cost to maintain it is minimal. If the speculators had hold of this money it would be - it would be - can you guess, it would be what we have now - a meltdown, a mess. And why do you think your employer would match the contribution if they didn't have to? Many corporations have already abandoned pensions and they surely care not one iota for your future.

getting SS out of government hands and allowing people to put their 7.5% and their employers' 7.5% into their own accounts that they own would be better "insurance" than allowing the government to use that money.

So if SS is solvent and doing well, tell me just how much money is in the SS system right now?

The answer is none. The money is taken by the government, your money, is used to pad the books of the US government.

If I did what the government did with SS with my employee's retirement match, I would be arrested. Wouldn't it be nice if I could "borrow from" my employee's funds to shore up another part of my business and then put that money, not in the debit column but in the plus column. Then I could just take money from my future employees to to pay back the money that I borrowed from earlier employees.

there is a name for that kind of operation. it's called a Ponzi scheme.

Corporations have moved away from defined benefit retirement plans to defined contribution retirements plans and most still offer a matching contribution. Just because an old style pension is not offered does not mean that nothing is offered.

 

[Care4all]

I don't trust the government with my money, but I trust the PRIVATE SECTOR even LESS, after witnessing this fiasco.

 

[editec]

The only pressure brought on money lenders was their own avarice and greed.

And yes, most Americans are too busy working and raising kids and doing what ever they do to learn how to be successful stockbrokers.

Damned right they are. NOBODY can be a prudent investor when the people in charge of the temples to Mammon are drunk with greed, and the people assigning risks can't tell us how risky things really are, either.

In point of fact, some of the smartest investors in American CAUSED this fiasco, and many of the rest of them are going to lose their shirts because of it, too. Little recompense to most of us, that.

You guys with dough in money market funds and 401Ks and so forth, better wake the fuck up tomorrow.

Because tomorrow, dear hearts, the world which we lived in most of our lives is about to change in ways that few of us are going to like.

Expect to see the Feds do something like creating a body called a reivestment TRUST company...one which will assume the enormous debt loads and risk which the PRIVATE MARKET created but cannot cover on its own.

Now if the American government doesn't end up OWNING those financial institutions entirely, then we know these gangsters are going to TRY to play out this socialism for the rich, capitalism for the people, game just a little longer.

And what that means is that the dollar will collapse, I suspect, because its value is tied to the debts adn prodcutivity of the nation and debt is rising and productivity will fall.

The American citizen will be on the hook for all the risk, and the master class will be allowed to keep all the things those entites own that aren't insolvent.

Oh some stockholders will get hurt, but the american taxpayers will be on the hook for hundreds of TRILLIONS of dollars in unrecoverable debts.

That's what I expect from these clowns, too, incidently.

They're going to try to play out the game like this is the best possible solution and give the monied class time to get their money offshore while the rest of us try to manage in a nation where every one of our governments is basically officially or unoffically bankrupted, and the economy is either awash in money with no value, or devoid of enough money to be a going concern.

Either way, most of us without the dough to get the hell out of this reign of economic terror that will follow are more or less fucked.

You have a retirement nest egg, do you?

Good luck with that.

I can't even begin to tell you where to invest it, to be honest.

It depends on "THE PLAN" we'll see tomorrow.

If I havd money to lose I'd be buying gold or silver as tht last of all possible refuges, to be honest.

I dont' trust Tbills, and I certainly don't CARE what the market does because the market has been lied to now for the last twenty years.

The market is not now, nor has it been an indicator of national economic health for the last thirty years, either.

The market's total value is dwarfed by the DEBT/BOND market, folks.

 

[Skull Pilot]

I don't trust the government with my money, but I trust the PRIVATE SECTOR even LESS, after witnessing this fiasco.

The private sector starts with you. You can put your money wherever you want. Of course that means you have to educate yourself a little on how the market works.

There are thousands of companies that are doing just fine right now. The mistakes made here were not mistakes of all but just of several financial companies. And do you realize that none of these companies actually realized any losses? What they experienced were write downs of paper held on mortgage backed securities.

When you realize how this panic started, you'll see that it never actually resulted in real monetary losses. The majority of these mortgages were actually being serviced and only a very small percent were not. So these financial firms that held these long term assets that were being paid for the most part based their financial decisions on a faulty assumption that becasue they couldn't sell off their paper and that it was actually costing them money when in reality it wasn't.

Put it this way. If you own a home, you may have seen a paper loss in value because the housing market is depressed. That does not mean you have lost any money it means you have seen a write down. if you acted like Wall St., you would be panicing and trying to sell your house at a loss when there is no market for it and then call it an actual loss.


Steve Forbes explains it here when he talks about how long term assets shoud not be treated like short term assets.

http://http://www.forbes.com/video/

 

[editec]

The private sector starts with you. You can put your money wherever you want. Of course that means you have to educate yourself a little on how the market works.

True enough

There are thousands of companies that are doing just fine right now. The mistakes made here were not mistakes of all but just of several financial companies. And do you realize that none of these companies actually realized any losses? What they experienced were write downs of paper held on mortgage backed securities.

True also

When you realize how this panic started, you'll see that it never actually resulted in real monetary losses. The majority of these mortgages were actually being serviced and only a very small percent were not. So these financial firms that held these long term assets that were being paid for the most part based their financial decisions on a faulty assumption that becasue they couldn't sell off their paper and that it was actually costing them money when in reality it wasn't.

The problem being that unless those firms holding that paper wcould find a market for it, there was no way to determine its value. Hence the insitutions capitalization was questionable.

Put it this way. If you own a home, you may have seen a paper loss in value because the housing market is depressed. That does not mean you have lost any money it means you have seen a write down. if you acted like Wall St., you would be panicing and trying to sell your house at a loss when there is no market for it and then call it an actual loss.

True...unless you are using your house of questionable value as the capitalization from whence you loan money to others...then that "paper loss" is very very real

Steve Forbes explains it here when he talks about how long term assets shoud not be treated like short term assets.

http://http://www.forbes.com/video/

Steve is one of the more creative minds when it comes to finding ways to excuse the market for screwing up.

 

[Mad Scientist]

A rather odd conclusion given the times. Can you say Enron, Worldcom etc etc etc etc etc and guess who is bailing out many of the others who do so well when left on their own. Any guesses.

Yes the free market has it's ups and downs, but government only has it's downs.
Name some government services you like and want more of. Besides Defense, I can't think of any.
Yes, government provides some services but the free market will always deliver a better product.

Had any good government cheese burgers lately?

 

[indago]

Care4all wrote:
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I don't trust the government with my money, but I trust the PRIVATE SECTOR even LESS, after witnessing this fiasco.
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PAYBACK

 

[sealybobo]

Care4all wrote:
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I don't trust the government with my money, but I trust the PRIVATE SECTOR even LESS, after witnessing this fiasco.
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PAYBACK

This is the big news that no one is telling us about the bailout:

A critical - and radical - component of the bailout package proposed by the Bush administration has thus far failed to garner the serious attention of anyone in the press. Section 8

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.



Dirty Secret Of The Bailout: Thirty-Two Words That None Dare Utter