Wall Street Targets the Elderly - Looting Social Security

[grassfed]

PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Hank 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 New York Times 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.

Wall Street’s approach to the poor has always been to drive them deeper into the ground.

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.

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.”

more http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts02192010.html

[DJ13]

1. this guy 'gets it'

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.

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.

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.

[TomClash]

3. He was once very much a part of it

He knows where the bodies are buried.

[mrdmk]

2. K & R, good find grassfed

A must read, simple and to the point!

[life long demo]

4. WHEN CAN I STOP WORRYING

I haven't been able to retire, I'm 67 and thank God, I still have a job, doesn't pay much but at least I get health insurance less expensive than medicare & the additional insurance you need now. This was an excellent article, but the angst that had been waining, it's now back. "They" will continue to try to get social security moved to Wall street. Oh Lord.

[Vidar]

5. K&R.

[pappyg]

6. Social Security taxing scheme

for a community based, little guy solution to the SS issue; www.americaretoday.com