You should be glad that the SS Trust Fund is buying Uncle Sam's IOUs (ie
Treasury bonds, the most secure investment possible). Otherwise Bush &
Cheney's deficit spending would have to be entirely financed by the
Japanese, Chinese, French, etc etc.


Dave wrote:
You have it just backwards, Doug.

I disagree.

... Think about it for a minute.

I have, for more than that, even.

... If you have a
pension from GM, and you're concerned about whether GM will have the money
to pay it, would you rather your pension fund be invested in GM promissory
notes, or promissory notes of a bunch of other solid companies which are
extremely unlikely to all fail at the same time?


Multiple companies, of course... but how is this relevant? For one
thing, no private company can print it's own money; for another, if
Uncle Sam defaults on our debt we will have a full-blown world-wide
economic crisis to worry about; for a third, Uncle Sam is already the
guarantor of all companies private pension plans already... in fact this
is another impending blow-up...


Congress already answered that question for private pension funds. Their
ability to hold employer securities is extremely limited. If we wanted a
secure investment for the SS money to be sure the money would be there,
rather than a smoke and mirrors system, we'd be lending the excess SS
payments to the Japanese, Chinese, French, Swiss, etc., not to the outfit
that owes the SS benefits anyway.


IMHO you're the one who has it backwards... why would the Japanese,
Chinese, French, Swiss, etc etc pay private US citizens retirement
benefits when they could default at no risk?

The way the current system is set up, default is *very* risky to the
borrower. This should give a great deal of reassurance to those
dependent on the proceeds of that debt.

DSK