Otiswild quoted:
"By the time of her death, Fuller had collected $22,888.92 from Social Security monthly benefits, compared to her contributions of $24.75 to the system."

I strongly doubt that is accurate. Need to be fully insured and have 20 out of 40 covered quarters to collect SS and need to be in USA to collect SSI.

@Otiswild

Hey think the entire thing is about to burn and the politicians are going to go with the inflation attempt because it is the most politically feasible as it requires no votes in congress or orders from the President and they can do a collective no one saw this coming sigh with help of the national media.

I worked on political campaigns for a few years. No politician on the left or right will stand there and tell older people I'm going to cut your benefits and any that would will be out of office faster than you can blink an eye.

Inflation won't work. Mathematically, it can't.

Agreed, Gen. Even if they think they can inflate their way out of it, they can't. Higher inflation would mean higher interest rates. Our average Treasury obligation duration is very short. They put us on an national Option ARM. Try servicing $14, $15, $20, $30 trillion at double-digit rates. QE won't do it either. Spending (especially including entitlements) will be cut or we will go off the cliff. Jake3643 is probably right that politics as usual means we're cliff-bound. After all, we'd have to not only outvote his mother - we'd have to outvote those voting for their mothers.

Gen, how could deflation work? How could we make our payments in such a scenario?

Dire: Who says we can make the payments, no matter what we do?

"apply price controls to food"

This has never worked AFAIK.

One of my first posts here was about 12USC95b and I got heat from you Karl. The whole damn thing is a bankers cartel, set up by the former governor of NY, FDR. I know guys that can show you in US law that the Secretary is the Chief Governor of the IMF. Who does the IMF bail out? It isn't countries, but bankers. When FDR came into office, he reversed the liabilities of the Fed, the Fed owing the holders of their notes the gold behind the currency to the holders of the currency owing every dime back to the Fed in payment of US debt. Now what are they doing? Of course, they are buying junk the bankers owe us for and reversing it to where we pay them what they owe us and then we owe them. The camel got its nose in the tent in 1913, was led into the tent in 1933 and is tearing the tent down now.

Paulson didn't need Congress or the President to do the TARP. It was authorized under 12USC95b, under a continuing emergency (see Senate Report 93-549), which automatically approves actions, proclaimations, etc done by the Secretary of the Treasury or President or his delegate. Look how many undeclared wars we have had. The president declares an emergency (Clinton declared one on Bin Laden in 1998, effectively declaring war), Congress sits around playing with their prostates and next thing you know...

Look at the ****ers we have had as treasury secretary (Jump You ****ers would be appropriate here). Rubin and Paulson and Summers and Geithner. You can find better turds at the local sewer plant. Their mamas are either *****s or they tell these guys to not show us around their house. You might recall Rubin came in back in 1994 and unilaterally bailed out Mexico, right after Goldman deflated the country by pulling the money out through the wire. $40 billion if I recall. Not a peep out of Congress. I noticed GE was being bulled yesterday. Paulson gave them a Federal guarantee to issue debt, along with his old alma mater, Goldman. 2 years later, these bastards are paying themselves a $100 billion bonus as a group, money the US Treasury sent to them under the table. Of course KD knows this.

So what is going on here? The Fed is buying trash and passing it onto Uncle Sam. Where is Congress? Searching for hemorrhoids with a flashlight? Remember, Paulson and Geithner guaranteed trillions of debt for these suckers. Bernanke, Paulson and Geithner (NY Fed) guaranteed Bear Stearns portfolio of nothing but air.

Dr. Eugene Schroeder got a hearing in front of the Colorado Senate Veterans Affairs on this subject. There was one woman on the committee that was interested, but there was another Einstein that thought people had to put money in banks to lend it out. Schroeders solution was for the states to start kicking the Feds out of the states and get together a referendum to extract us from this totalitarian corporate state. Supporting Schroeder on this subject was one, Walker F. Todd, former Chief Counsel of the Cleveland Federal Reserve, who wrote a piece I believe was titled From Constitutional Republic to Corporate State.

http://www.fame.org/HTM/Todd_Walker_F_Fr....

I know this sounds like a nutter idea Karl, but it is very valid simply by the actions taken over the years. We have to get this law off the books are this will not stop. Using emergency is what destroyed every republic in history. We have a choice between constitutional republic and a bankocracy.

Social Security would be in ok shape if the excess funds since the 1983 tax increases had gone into marketable Treasury bonds. Instead they went into UNmarketable Treasury "securities" and the actual cash went to cut taxes for the rich, further bloat the Pentagon budget, etc.

FYI: http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjan11/Soci....

Quote:

Social Security would be in ok shape if the excess funds since the 1983 tax increases had gone into marketable Treasury bonds. Instead they went into UNmarketable Treasury "securities" and the actual cash went to cut taxes for the rich, further bloat the Pentagon budget, etc.

Uh, no. It would have made things better, but it wouldn't be "ok".

This is one of those often-repeated lies.

I agree that Medicare and SS are a strain to the economy, but are we not seeing the whole picture? If a person reaches 65, and starts to collect, what are his chances of living more than 20 years longer? Compare this to welfare, where the recipient receives a monthly check, food stamps, housing, free cell phone with 250 minutes/mo. a tax credit check, etc. In some areas, we're on 4th generation welfare. Maybe the answer is to limit the time of eligibility for both programs. I know it sounds hard hearted, but something has to give.

Medicare, Medicaid and SS are all unsustainable.

Sorry. They just are.

We need to legalize cigarette ads on TV again. Winston tastes good like a cigarette should.

They don't have the guts to cut the Military, SS or Medicare. If they don't cut the Military, Medicare and SS we're doomed. So where's that leave us?





I'm just saying.

@Genesis

Mathematically nothing can work. Inflation is the last gasp hail Mary. It is the last way to keep things going for a few years when the people who are no longer drinking their own Kool-Aid in Manhattan and D.C. prepare their lifeboats.

Politically you can't cut Social Security. You just can't do it politically. You can cut it on people who are maybe 50 and below, but you can't cut it on people 50 and above with nothing short of a revolution at the ballot box. Tell those people that are 50 and below they are paying the same taxes or higher taxes for less benefits...you got another political situation on your hands.

You can't cut Military spending, because well it is the only thing backing the $ right now is our ability to drop a bomb where ever the hell we want to, when we want to, and no one can drop one back on us outside of a few EU powers and China and Russia.

Politically anyone who thinks the two political entities that got us into this can feasibly get us out of it needs to be checked out. It would mean that the two political entities have to come forward and tell people they have been lying to them for 40 years. Tea Party? How quickly was Dick Armey running around with those guys as a controlling factor. I had some hope in that group and there his mug appeared.

Hell the Catholic Church decided to apologize to the guy that said the Earth revolved around the Sun was a few hundred years after all party's involved were dead. You think the Republicans and Democrats are going to come clean on 40 years of mismanagement and more mismanagement to cover up for the mismanagement.

Interesting note, just read China started to prepare for this in 2005. I'm going to be amused when all those American investors find out what a partnership with China means as China starts getting bolder and bolder. They can ask the Japanese about that with their response to the minor fishing boat fiasco.

War is coming; that's the traditional way of reducing your competitors' productive capacity. It also lets TPTB silence their critics.

I guess I'm just too cynical anymore. TPTB are in control of an out-of-control situation and have no fukkin clue what to do, therefore they will do what they've always done.

Edit: War = other than Iraq/Afghanistan.

Quote:

Maybe the answer is to limit the time of eligibility for both programs.

I thought there was a time limit on welfare.

http://www.mdrc.org/publications/51/over....

The Bankster Kings wrote..

The change essentially allows the Fed to denote losses by the various regional reserve banks that make up the Fed system as a liability to the Treasury rather than a hit to its capital.

Now, I don't claim to know very much about structured business finances - being only a humble (though well schooled) engineer and all - but is it reasonable to assume any private business who did this would be running at least nominally afoul of large piles of rather well settled laws against fraud and some such?

And yet, people continue to buy our T-bills.

So, the insanity continues. Apace.

You can cut entitlements without the masses noticing.

Freeze them, and then print like mad. You can even throw in generous cost of living increases if you run the presses a little harder to offset.

You can be sure that ALL of these players are DESPERATE to NOT be the ones written into the history books as having been at the helm when USA defaulted. Timmy, Ben - all of 'em are desperate to keep it going.

Guess I will continue converting my FRNs to heavy metals [Au, Ag, Pb]; purchasing and storing staples like canned goods, water, dry goods. They are determined to crash this thing, I guess preparing for the worst and hoping for the best are all I can do.

Genesis wrote..

Congress can vote to defund and terminate them without recourse.

Here's an example of the recourse, and over a much smaller sum of money:



These veterans weren't even legally owed their bonus until 1945.
Despite their set-back at the hands of Gen MacArthur in 1932, they were given the bonuses in 1936 by Congress which over-rode a veto by Roosevelt!

Quote:

The "obligations" will be honored with debased currency.

Tried in the 70s. Ended with 15% Treasuries.

So be it.

Quote:

And yet, people continue to buy our T-bills.

Really? Who? Great Britain? Yeah Right.

The only ones "buying" are those FORCED to through their retirement "plans" that the the banksters & FED put in place over many years for exactly this reason ... to provide forced buying support at a time such as this which they knew was coming.

Why can't we just end the Fed? They're a private banking cartel, right? Tell them to take all their empty boxes of bogus MBS and go back to Europe where they came from. Issue new currency through the Treasury. That would help...