Greenspan - The Class Warrior

[reprehensor]

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17969

After supporting tax cuts for the wealthy, which have already blown a gaping hole in the federal budget, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told lawmakers on Wednesday that Congress should extend the cuts indefinitely – at a cost of $1.5 trillion over the next ten years – and pay for it by slashing Social Security.


Greenspan's comments were particularly surprising because our current budget problems are completely unrelated to Social Security. A recent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities study reveals that, in the last three years, the nation's long-term budget projection has gone from a $5 trillion surplus to a $4.3 trillion deficit and tax cuts were the single largest factor behind that decline. The large role of tax cuts in the deficit has been confirmed by the President's own budget analysis. Social Security, meanwhile, continues to run a surplus. Greenspan's recommendation amounts to a huge transfer of wealth from future retirees to the very rich. The President, for his part, dodged a direct question yesterday about whether he believes, as Greenspan does, we should scale back Social Security to deal with the rising budget deficit, saying he needed to "see exactly what said."


On Wednesday, Greenspan argued that the tax cuts should be extended because allowing them to rise to their previous levels would "pose significant risks to...the revenue base." But when he argued in favor of Bush's first tax cut in January 2001, he made the opposite argument – that lowering tax rates was necessary to reduce revenue. Greenspan was worried that the government would quickly pay off the entire deficit and be awash in so much money it wouldn't have anywhere productive to spend it. The Washington Post reported on January 27, 2001 that Greenspan "justified his support of tax cuts by focusing on a problem that may not even emerge until the end of a possible second Bush term – the government being forced to buy private assets because it had paid off all the national debt and still had buckets of cash left over." Given the dramatic turnaround in the nation's fiscal health – a $9.3 trillion turnaround in just three years – Greenspan's prediction was horribly wrong.


When he was aggressively pushing the President's massive tax cut in 2001, Greenspan was directly questioned about its effect on Social Security. On March 2, 2001, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) asked Greenspan, "Do I want tax cuts?...this is my problem: there's such a considerable measure of uncertainty in the projections over the course of the baby boomers' retirement that how are we going to prepare for this?" Greenspan responded that there was no reason for concern because "despite the fact that there is a very dramatic rise" in the retiring population from the Baby Boom, "the effect of acceleration in productivity" will mean that revenues will be "more than adequate to meet that big surge through a goodly part of the decade subsequent to 2010."

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When the Democrat nominee takes the White House, Greenspan must go.

[German-Lefty]

1. You can't fire Greenspan

When the Democrat nominee takes the White House, Greenspan must go.
Yeah, what's up with this guy.

I don't think you can fire him. He is appointed and I think has to step down himself, kind of like a supreme court judge. The idea is to keep him independent of politics. That's why you can't trust Congress to set interest rates.

Still It would be nice to have a democrat in the white house and have him retire.

[ferg]

2. he has a seven year term

I believe the term is up this year sometime around the summer.

[stevebreeze]

4. Greenspan's term is up in June

Bush has promised to reappoint him. This was reaffirmed after Greenspans's latest remarks.

Greenspan needs to go!

[stevebreeze]

3. It is important to remember Greenspan's other part in SS

it was the Greenspan commission report in 1983 that proposed the idea that we should raise the regressive SS taxes far above what needed to meet current needs. In effect we have been overpaying SS taxes for 20 years on the promise that this would save SS for the retirement of the baby boomer's.

Taxes that your defer to a later date mean you have a lower tax burden as you can invest the taxes you did not pay and through what Albert Einstein called the greatest mathematical invention compound interest, pay for the tax at no cost. If you can defer them long enough. In contrast to that taxes you pay ahead of time are far more burdensome.

Greenspan needs to go!


:kick:

[modrepub]

6. I agree

Why someone hasn't shoved this point up his pompous ass during these hearings is beyond me! Let's not forget Saint Ronnie signed this tax increase. I know there is no way we'll get paid back, I just want these bastards to admit it. My proposal would be to return the surplus each year. You could either put it in an IRA of your choice (tax free) or take it after paying taxes on it. This would allow people to invest for retirement or spend it and suffer later (hey, you had a choice). The unfortunate part would be the deficit numbers would increase several billion dollars.

[rapier]

8. It's worse than you think

An excellent overview from the very good Blog, Whisky Bar,

If the Face Fits II
http://billmon.org/

A Transcript from Lou Dobbs on CNN. CNN is going off the wire here. The matix better step in and get them back into line behind The Party I think.

[seasat]

5. Greenspan is a Randroid

He is a devotee of Ayn Rand's type of libertarian philosophy. When they refer to Grover Norquist's "starve the beast" approach to set our government back to the stage it was at during the early 1900s when robber barons ruled the economy, they are talking about Greenspan's philosophy.

[rapier]

9. notes

He was an outsider of sorts there and I just don't think he has an ideology per say. Make the case if you like but I don't think it serves much purpose.

What Al has done here is bad but what he has done to encourage the formation of a finance based economy is his real crime. He is simply the worst central banker of all time. History will bear me out I think.

He is due for reappointment this spring I think. This is a really sticky issue for Bush. We too should be carefull what we wish for. His likely replacement is Fed Governor Bernake, from Texas of all places. He is actually an economic professor. He is an enthusistic champion of printing money. Al was, sort of, also but he never said so outloud. While Al has to go the mess he has made is so gigantic that there is no turning back.

I think Bush still hates Al because he blame Al for daddys loss in 92 and as we all know loayalty and grudge is Bush's main interests. The thing is that there is so much faith in Al's ability to fix things that when he leaves there is a good chance there will be a crisis in confidence in the markets. It's a funny thing but Al replacing Volker was a primary cause of thd 87 panic. If Bush replaces Al, for all the wrong reasons of course, and there is trouble then Bush takes the blame. So I don't think Bush will fail to re appoint. I think Al might just quit.

This will be a HUGE deal.

[rfkrocks]

7. alan's late

for his bingo game at the home