From a new blog, "Cunning Realist"
http://cunningrealist.blogspot.com/A bit about me: I am in my late 30's, a resident of New York City, and the founder and president of a Manhattan-based asset management firm. I have a BA from a top-ten university and an Ivy League MBA. I'm a lifelong conservative with a strong independent streak.
<snip>
Let's get right to it with some comments on the debate over Social Security. There is some excellent in-depth analysis on the web from many sources including Josh Marshall, National Review Online, and Nouriel Roubini, so I'll try to offer a unique anecdotal perspective. Through my job, I have frequent contact with insiders of public companies, both inside and outside the financial industry. This week, I spoke to an executive at a large publicly-traded technology firm
<snip>
This executive sees one shining beacon in the fog of increasingly strict accounting standards and a difficult business environment: The prospect of Social Security reform. He told me that he and many of this colleagues at other companies favor the creation of private accounts, because a new source of demand for his stock will help compensate for the increasing unattractiveness of his company from an investment perspective. This executive also made it completely clear (albeit in casual, friendly terms--which is perhaps the only way he would have voiced this sentiment at all) that he looked forward to private accounts "picking up the slack" that the new accounting rules and increasingly difficult business conditions in general will create.
<snip>
Make no mistake about it: This executive wants private accounts that invest in the stock market and his stock in particular. He sees private accounts as transferring risk from him to the public--risk, he surely knows, that is already being transferred through instruments such as IRA's, 401K's, and the explosion of mutual funds over the past decade. He's profited handsomely from that transfer of risk. From a corporate perspective he wants that transfer to continue, and from a personal one he needs it to continue to support his lifestyle.
<snip>
more...
http://cunningrealist.blogspot.com/2005/03/some-opening-comments-and-bit-about.html