Krugman discusses the $15 TRILLION iceberg Bush is putting on Social Sec.

[papau]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/11/opinion/11krugman.htm...

January 11, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Iceberg Cometh
By PAUL KRUGMAN

<snip>The administration expects us not to notice, however, that the supposed solution would do nothing to reduce that cost. Even with the most favorable assumptions, the benefits of privatization wouldn't kick in until most of the baby boomers were long gone. For the next 45 years, privatization would cost much more money than it saved.

Advocates of privatization almost always pretend that all we have to do is borrow a bit of money up front, and then the system will become self-sustaining. The Wehner memo talks of borrowing $1 trillion to $2 trillion "to cover transition costs." Similar numbers have been widely reported in the news media.

But that's just the borrowing over the next decade. Privatization would cost an additional $3 trillion in its second decade, $5 trillion in the decade after that and another $5 trillion in the decade after that. By the time privatization started to save money, if it ever did, the federal government would have run up around $15 trillion in extra debt.

These numbers are based on a Congressional Budget Office analysis of Plan 2, which was devised by a special presidential commission in 2001 and is widely expected to be the basis for President Bush's plan.<snip>

[Inland]

1. Shows the Bushite fraud in manipulating time frames

The privateers only tell us of the two trillion dollars that privatization will cost in its first ten years.

So Bush is all eyes for a possible shortfall in the present system forty years from now, but the cost of his own plan, well, he suddenly has no idea what will happen ten years from now so best not to talk about it.

We have a plan for the next forty years presently. Bush has a plan for ten years and a jump into the dark after that. What a dick.

[keith the dem]

2. Krugman is the voice in the wilderness

MSM is math-phobic and has no interest or knowledge of the facts of budgets or numbers. They are happy to report that the * math that says 1 + 1 = 5 is a legitimate alternate point of view.

[Justitia]

3. Thank God for Krugman!!! Smart and 100% correct, but GMA shills for Bush.

Thank God Krugman is trying to get the hard, cold FACTS out there.

'Course the sheep at large just let their eyes glaze over and are lulled to sleep by the CATO buzzards like the one shilling on Good Morning America this morning. If it's on teevee with some ABC approved "expert" it must be true. Besides, it's "hard work" reading and thinking.

Thank you Mr. Krugman - please, please don't stop telling the truth about the myth that is the "SS crisis"!

[opihimoimoi]

4. The National Debt won't take much more before it caves in to the interest

pressure...

Guess who owns the banks and institutes, Pubs and Friends.

[rodeodance]

5. "There's an iceberg in front of us, all right. And Mr. Bush wants us to

steam right into it, full speed ahead."

Sad thing is--people will steam ahead, rub elbows with this lumming iceburg and not realize it was there.

[sam sarrha]

6. now the banks get to loan 2 Trillion.. That's why Bu$h wanted to do that..

he is in with the banks to give them more big profits..and loans we will never be able to pay back..we will never be able to keep up with the interest.!!!

so this privatization is just to make us indentured to more banks than we already are now...???!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[GOPBasher]

7. Krugman rocks! I'd vote for him if he ran for anything. nt

[oecher3]

8. privatization has one side effect...

if SSec is really privatized then stockbrokers get an even bigger chance to create another stockmarket bubble, which in turn will lead for a few people skimming off and getting rich while when it bursts most people get chipped. Income redistribution the reversed way.
After all, it was the average Joe Dough, who was lured into the market by the promise that one could invest in any stock and would become the next tech stock millionaire. Which, ehm, reminds me, has one of the scammers of Enro, World Com, and Co. been punished for their fraud?

Thanks, another roll of shock to the economy, just what we need.

[sam sarrha]

9. you can bet the skimmers and bottom feeders will be friedns of te Bu$h's

[On the Road]

10. Holy Shit -- Are You Kidding?

I always thought the $1-2 Trillion seemed low, but it was repeated so often by both sides that I figured it had to be true.

But it turns out that's only a ten-year number? It's really $15 TRILLION? Jesus Christ, man!

Bush's excuse: "But the pension fund was just sitting there!"