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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=3>Interesting that Paul Craig Robert's new book is
being published by Counterpunch / AK Press.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>David J.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message -----
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=tanstl@aol.com href="mailto:tanstl@aol.com">David Sladky</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=undisclosed-recipients:
href="mailto:undisclosed-recipients:">undisclosed-recipients:</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Saturday, February 27, 2010 10:23 AM</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> Looting Social Security </DIV></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV><FONT face=arial color=black size=2><BR><BR>
<DIV align=right>Weekend Edition<BR>February 19 - 21, 2010</DIV>
<DIV align=right><FONT style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt" size=3><STRONG>The republicians
couldn't get it done, so now it's up to the D. team.</STRONG></FONT>
</DIV><I><FONT size=4>
<H1>Wall Street Targets the Elderly </H1></I></FONT><FONT color=#800000
size=5><FONT color=#800000 size=5>
<H1>Looting Social Security </H1></FONT></FONT><FONT color=#444444 size=4>By
PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS <BR></FONT><FONT face="Verdana, Arial" color=#800000
size=6><FONT face="Verdana, Arial" color=#800000 size=6><FONT
face="Verdana, Arial" color=#800000 size=6>H</FONT></FONT></FONT><FONT
face="Verdana, Arial" size=2><FONT face="Verdana, Arial" color=#444444
size=2>ank Paulson, the Gold Sacks bankster/US Treasury Secretary, who
deregulated the financial system, caused a world crisis that wrecked the
prospects of foreign banks and governments, caused millions of Americans to lose
retirement savings, homes, and jobs, and left taxpayers burdened with
multi-trillions of dollars of new US debt, is still not in jail. He is writing
in the <I>New York Times</I> urging that the mess he caused be fixed by taking
away from working Americans the Social Security and Medicare for which they have
paid in earmarked taxes all their working lives.<BR>Wall Street’s approach to
the poor has always been to drive them deeper into the ground. <BR>As there is
no money to be made from the poor, Wall Street fleeces them by yanking away
their entitlements. It has always been thus. During the Reagan administration,
Wall Street decided to boost the values of its bond and stock portfolios by
using Social Security revenues to lower budget deficits. Wall Street figured
that lower deficits would mean lower interest rates and higher bond and stock
prices.<BR>Two Wall Street henchmen, Alan Greenspan and David Stockman, set up
the Social Security raid in this way: The Carter administration had put Social
Security in the black for the foreseeable future by establishing a schedule for
future Social Security payroll tax increases. Greenspan and Stockman conspired
to phase in the payroll tax increases earlier than was needed in order to gain
surplus Social Security revenues that could be used to finance other government
spending, thus reducing the budget deficit. They sold it to President Reagan as
"putting Social Security on a sound basis."<BR>Along the way Americans were told
that the surplus revenues were going into a special Social Security trust fund
at the U.S. Treasury. But what is in the fund is Treasury IOUs for the spent
revenues. When the "trust funds" are needed to pay Social Security benefits, the
Treasury will have to sell more debt in order to redeem the IOUs.<BR>Social
Security was mugged again during the Clinton administration when the Boskin
Commission jimmied the Consumer Price Index in order to reduce the inflation
adjustments that Social Security recipients receive, thus diverting money from
Social Security retirees to other uses.<BR>We constantly hear from Wall Street
gangsters and from Republicans and an occasional Democrat that Social Security
and Medicare are a form of welfare that we can’t afford, an "unfunded
liability." This is a lie. Social Security is funded with an earmarked tax.
People pay for Social Security and Medicare all their working lives. It is a
pay-as-you-go system in which the taxes paid by those working fund those who are
retired. <BR>Currently these systems are not in deficit. The problem is that
government is using earmarked revenues for other purposes. Indeed, since the
1980s Social Security revenues have been used to fund general government. Today
Social Security revenues are being used to fund trillion dollar bailouts for
Wall Street and to fund the Bush/Obama wars of aggression against
Muslims.<BR>Having diverted Social Security revenues to war and Wall Street,
Paulson says there is no alternative but to take the promised benefits away from
those who have paid for them. <BR>Republicans have extraordinary animosity
toward the poor. In an effort to talk retirees out of their support systems,
Republicans frequently describe Social Security as a Ponzi scheme and
"unsustainable." They ought to know. The phony trust fund, which they set up to
hide the fact that Wall Street and the Pentagon are running off with Social
Security revenues, is a Ponzi scheme. Social Security itself has been with us
since the 1930s and has yet to wreck our lives and budget. But it only took Hank
Paulson’s derivative Ponzi scheme and its bailout a few years to inflict
irreparable damage on our lives and budget.<BR>Years ago with stagflation
defeated and a rising stock market, I favored privatizing Social Security as a
way of creating a funded retirement system and producing greater savings and
larger incomes for retirees. At that time Wall Street was interested, not for my
reasons, but in order to collect the fees from managing the funds. <BR>Had
Social Security been privatized, I doubt that Wall Street would have been
permitted to deregulate the financial system. Too much would have been at
stake.<BR>After the latest crisis brought on by Wall Street’s dishonesty and
greed, trusting Wall Street to manage anyone’s old age pension requires a leap
of faith that no intelligent person can make. <BR>Wall Street has got away with
its raid on the public treasury. Now, pockets full, it wants to pay for the
heist by curtailing Social Security and Medicare. Having deprived the working
population of homes, jobs, and health care, Wall Street is now after the
elderly’s old age security.<BR>Social Security, formerly an untouchable "third
rail of politics," is now "unsustainable," while the real unsustainables--a
pre-1929 unregulated financial system and open-ended multi-trillion dollar
Global War Against Terror--are the new untouchables. This transformation signals
the complete capture of American democracy by an oligarchy of special
interests.<BR><B>Paul Craig Roberts</B> was an editor of the Wall Street Journal
and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. His latest book,
</FONT></FONT><U><FONT face="Verdana, Arial" color=#0000ff size=2><FONT
face="Verdana, Arial" color=#0000ff size=2><FONT face="Verdana, Arial"
color=#0000ff size=2>HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST</U></FONT></FONT></FONT><FONT
face="Verdana, Arial" size=2><FONT face="Verdana, Arial" color=#444444 size=2>,
has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at:
</FONT></FONT><U><FONT face="Verdana, Arial" color=#0000ff size=2><FONT
face="Verdana, Arial" color=#0000ff size=2><FONT face="Verdana, Arial"
color=#0000ff size=2><A
href="mailto:PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com">PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com</A></U></FONT></FONT></FONT><FONT
face="Verdana, Arial" size=2><FONT face="Verdana, Arial" size=2><FONT
color=#444444> </FONT><BR></FONT></FONT>
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