The IMF Black Helicopter Gang Wants Your Social Security

[girl gone mad]

The IMF Black Helicopter Gang Wants Your Social Security
by Dean Baker
http://www.politico.com/arena/perm/Dean_Baker_5A7CA7AB-F9E5-426F-8C82-1061D1F50490.html

A few years back there was a fear in some parts about black UN helicopters that were supposedly taking part in the planning of an invasion of the United States. While there was no foundation for this fear, there is basis for concern about another international organization, the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

This week the IMF told the United States that it needs to start getting its deficit down and put cutting Social Security at the top of its “to do” list. This one is more than a bit outrageous for two reasons.

First, the IMF can take a substantial share of the blame for economic crisis that gave us big deficits in the first place. The IMF is supposed to oversee the operations of the international financial system. According to standard economic theory, capital is supposed to flow from rich countries like the United States to poor countries to finance their development. In other words, the United States should be having a trade surplus, which would correspond to the money that we are lending to poor countries to finance their development.

However, the IMF messed up its management of financial crises so badly in the last decade that poor countries decided that they had to accumulate huge amounts of reserves in order to avoid ever being forced
to deal with the IMF. This meant that capital was flowing in huge amounts in the wrong direction. One result of this reverse flow was that the United States ran a huge trade deficit instead of a trade surplus. Another result was the $8 trillion housing bubble, the collapse of that crashed the U.S. economy.

read more: http://www.politico.com/arena/perm/Dean_Baker_5A7CA7AB-F9E5-426F-8C82-1061D1F50490.html

[RKP5637]

1. Is there REALLY anyway out of this mess... at what point do we just throw the

towel in... All I see around here are costs going up, the price of food is getting outrageous, for example. Anymore, I often feel it doesn't matter what the F we do, we are screwed in the NEW USA, Inc.

[jtuck004]

2. Don't mourn. Organize.

Thank you Joe

[RKP5637]

9. Thanks for the link!!! n/t

[jtuck004]

15. It's what a lot of people have forgotten how to do, I think.

Here's a person, about to face a firing squad, people upset because they are about to lose their leader. Unlike many of us he is not facing the loss of an unemployment check or disappointed in his party's - he's gonna die. And his response?

Don't mourn. Organize.

But I think what concentrated his thinking is that he was about getting behind an IDEA - maybe democratic socialism? Not the party stuff everyone seems to do today. Everyone knows how to get people to vote for their candidate. As long as you don't have an idiot, and circumstances are right, that's the easy part.

Getting a group together based on issues and needs that are THEIR OWN, everyone organized, conscious of and understanding the salient points, ready to take action until they get what their group needs - who gets the office is nearly irrelevant...I don't see that. The focus is power, and everything else flows from that. It's kinda like the teabaggers and repubs are doing, but they are more about making others lose power, I think, so they get a little by default, but that's as far as their thinking goes. Goldman Sachs (and the other banks) seem to be much better at it - they have more power than unions, democrats, and repubs combined. Which gets them the money that is their goal.

They could be beaten by organizing people around their own economic interests, but who would profit from that is hard to see, and that makes it hard to finance, I think. I don't think the democrats can do it without pissing off all their special interest groups. The repubs think the banks are their friends - until there is no money left for them. So maybe in a Capitalist system that's where it ends. Don't know.

[Lorien]

3. Of course there's a way out. Get out of the wars, slash the Pentagon budget

tax the rich and corporations, give tax breaks to those who create jobs here and penalties to those who offshore, spend more on green energy, infrastructure, education, jobs programs, unemployment benefits, food stamps, create a National maglev high speed rail system, decriminalize marijuana and industrialized hemp, and create a National health care system similar to the NHS. The WAY exists, the political WILL does not because the logical way does not keep the predatory corporatists uber wealthy while continually making the rest of us more desperate. They NEED more disasters to keep disaster Capitalism rolling.

[RKP5637]

8. Sadly this is what I thought I voted for... I often feel I was duped. n/t

[Lorien]

17. We were. nt

[FBI_Un_Sub]

13. It is doable.

Pay as you go for our wars.

• Assumption -- most of our military expenditures are not "defensive" but are to protect and secure our access to oil. In this regard see Michael Klare's various books. This is a "tax subsidy" of about $2.00 per gallon basis imported oil content.
  
• Gasoline is heavily subsidized, e.g., depletion allowances, triggering of depreciation, etc. Remove these tax subsidies.
  
• Another $2.00 per gallon.
  

"Social security is going bankrupt" is a myth -- like Sara Palin's "Death Panels"

• The $106,000 cap shields high income tax payers. Blow away that cap.
  
• Apply that tax to all -- interest, dividends, etc. (Based on the "Developer's Instructions" for TurboTax plugins).
  

[truedelphi]

19. Very well stated.

I remember in one of the analyses of Orwell's writing, it is mentioned that the Upper One Percent does not need to have the misery that they cause - they would be just as rich if they promoted the idea of a two trillion dollar give away to the Tesla Car manufacturer, rather than a two trillion dollar war in Iraq.

But the Upper Elite like control and power just as much as they like Money.

And for that we the people of the planet, and the planet and all its creatures, are screwn.

[sabrina 1]

4. Social Security has NOTHING to do with the deficit.

People have to completely debunk this myth. It is a lie. The Social Security fund is solvent for decades to come, and almost all real economists have verified that.

We are going to keep hearing this and people need to arm themselves with facts so they can shoot down these lies.

The IMF needs to be disbanded, it is another criminal organization that has caused misery to untold millions of people around the world. I don't know why anyone would be listening to them.

Don't we have a government here? Since when does the IMF tell us what to do? Who ARE these people and who got us involved with them?

This is beyond disgusting. Something needs to be done fast to get this country out of the hands of the vultures who are running it from behind the scenes. The American people need to wake up and start letting them know, they will not do to this country what they have done to others, or they will.

Our government has been selling this country to the highest bidder for a long time, to foreign interests, against the will of the American people, without their knowledge.

[havocmom]

5. Yep. And one can imagine the IMF drooling at the thought of SS $ invested

The whole investment thing seems to have reached about as far as it can. New cash needed. Us peons have invested all we could, and too many got screwed for our efforts. We have nothing more to put in voluntarily. The pigs want forced contributions. They want us as indentured servants to their bad habits and high living.

Nations don't really exist anymore. Just theater and window dressing to keep the people distracted while they are being robbed.

[sabrina 1]

6. Yes, a ten trillion dollar fund afaik. They've wanted it for

decades. They are like a band of bank robbers who have been casing the SS Bank for decades, and they are getting ready to move in for the big heist, using the financial crisis as a distraction. I wonder if it's too late to stop them!!

[RKP5637]

10. We are all pawns in a very sad game, as you said, "Nations don't really exist anymore." We

have been / are being hijacked and many Americans I think are asleep at the wheel and easily led by the propaganda, and/or just can't be bothered to pay attention or remotely understand what is going on... too many get sound bites from the ridiculous M$M, and then think they understand the issues.

[notadmblnd]

7. I say we sue the IMF and use that money to pay down the deficit.

[lib2DaBone]

11. Oh Ya.. they are coming for our SS thanks to Mr. Obama's Deficit Commission..

During the November Lame Duck Session.. we can expect the Cap and Trade Casino to open, the start of a National Sales Tax, Charter Schools, Internal Passports for inter-state travel, and a way to put the BP Oil disaster off onto the working poor.

Count on it...

[havocmom]

12. but, he's so dreamy......

:banghead:

I count on being old and having nothing PDQ. I won't be alone. Masses of people with nothing to lose can be dangerous. Even the guards at the gated communities have mothers and fathers.

Think it's time for an 'Eat the Rich Cookbook'? I do.

[jtuck004]

16. Just a tip - don't baste too early. Wait until almost done,

then baste. It doesn't burn the sauce so much that way.

[girl gone mad]

14. The neo-liberal dream come true.

Jackpot.

[Lilith Velkor]

18. DFHs to USA: We tried to warn you that you were next.