If we had let everyone gamble their Social Security in the Stock Market like McCain wanted...

[NNN0LHI]

...how would we be able to bail all those people out?

Has anyone addressed this?

Don

[Muttocracy]

1. Al Franken just asked the same ? at his debate. nt

[Frustratedlady]

2. Back when Bush first suggested this risky option, could we have been in trouble then?

Was he trying to get more people in the market for some other reason than to invest? Were we already heading into this mess?

[Poll_Blind]

3. FL, I was thinking about this earlier today. I may eventually post an OP about it but...

...basically one of the points is yours- "Did they already know this was coming?" I think the arguable answer is yes. I think it might be more difficult to argue that they didn't know the crash was coming, especially with shutting down M2/M3 back in 2006. They knew the dive was coming. And they did everything they could to keep money flowing into the broken system- such a Republican thing to do.

  Anyway, the second point isn't so much a point but something to ponder. Seriously, ponder the following-

:redbox: The angle of rolling Social Security into the stock market was not just championed by Bush but by a number of lawmakers who lobbied hard for it.

:redbox: That the market was bound- inevitably bound- to crash or correct.

:redbox: That had Social Security been rolled into the stock market this crash would have bankrupted every living American, and their children's futures in a way which I don't think an English word yet exists to accurately describe. Seriously.

:redbox: Because of the level of overt corruption in Washington and collusion between Bush and corrupt corporations, even whole markets, that this could have assassinated the concept of "middle class" in any sense in America for decades, if not longer.

  What we will be living through will ultimately play out as worse than the Great Depression and the cold comfort we will receive is that historians will describe your children's generation as the greatest, hardiest Americans ever.

  But there is the, again, very arguable possibility that knowing the stock market was long overdue for a correction/crash and arguing for placing Social Security in the market was an attempt to destroy the entire system, once and for all, a sort of monument to the NeoConservative ideal. An even worse financial Pearl Harbor perpetrated on a people by their own government in an attempt to entirely, once and for all, change the character of American life and remove most or all wealth from the American people.

  I've been thinking about this, pondering it, off and on for about a week now.

PB

[sarcasmo]

4. This needs to be asked at the next debate, or at least be a topic.

[wishlist]

5. Neocons always wanted SS in market to prop it up, exploit profits from funds,

SS would have been a huge slush fund with which to pay millions to the investment companies to manage and derive fees as the well as propping up the markets. Just the initial startup cost of the complicated process of changing to private accounts would have been a tremendous financial windfall to Wall St.