Hey, Bernanke! Keep your fucking hands off my Social Security!

[Octafish]

Bernanke Channels Willie Sutton In Assault On Social Security: 'That's Where The Money Is' (actual Bernanke quote!).



Unlike Ben and most of his Wall Street-Washington-MI Complex MFers, I've earned my money. I did not work like a dog and pay Social Security taxes for 35 years now so these gangsters could find one last dime to rip off.

Hey, Obama! If you want to balance the budget, raise taxes on the fucking Big Daddy Warmongers who've looted the U.S. Treasury. Free clue for Attorny General Eric Holder: They're the same types who engineered the Wall Street bailout ripoff -- you know, your former clients.

[mmonk]

1. Recommended.

[lsewpershad]

63. +1000000

[Octafish]

72. Remember Henry Paulson in all this...

Banker to the BFEE

... You always remember, mmonk. Thank you!

[mmonk]

82. Thank you for the post.

[MannyGoldstein]

2. Too Late - We Voted This Change Into Office

One can only hope that we put Democrats in office before Ben, Larry, Timmy, Rahm, and Barack can raid the thing.

[ProSense]

5. " Barack can raid the thing."

From the SOTU:

Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years. (Applause.) Spending related to our national security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will not be affected. But all other discretionary government programs will.

[MannyGoldstein]

6. Different Raid

Social Security looks to be attacked by committee, not by the freeze. Many raiding parties at work here.

[ProSense]

9. The President has no plans to cut Social Security.

None.

[Jim Sagle]

11. And you know this how?

:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

[ProSense]

13. Can you point to a statement that shows the President plans to cut social security?

A direct quote?

[Jim Sagle]

22. Stupidly dishonest demand.

A bozo like w will come right out and bray it. Obama will finesse it through.

[vssmith]

26. I can find quotes where he supported single payer and then where he supported the public option

Do you have faith that what he says or doesn't say has much meaning?

[laughingliberal]

52. Exactly! I can't point to where he said he would abandon the public option at the drop of a hat,

either, but he did. Reading between the lines helps. He favors the deficit commission that Conrad and a bunch of Repugs wanted and he reappointed Bernancke who wants to cut SS to the Fed. It's not that hard to see what's coming.

[Edweird]

65. Ben Bernanke's nomination says it all. Action speaks louder than words.

[David Zephyr]

50. Just as some people "knew" that Obama was going to deliver the public option.

Social security is very vulnerable right now to being toyed with...again.

[TankLV]

35. Just like his "support" for the Public Option...!!!

sorry - WE won't fall for that LIE - again!!!

[ooglymoogly]

48. He already has.

No COLA when the price of all things are going through the roof. All they need is a changing basket of goods to pretend "there is no inflation". The biggest lie ever told.

[Foo Fighter]

19. "Many raiding parties at work here."

Boy, ain't that the truth.

[laughingliberal]

51. SS, Medicare, Medicaid will not be affected by the freeze but by the deficit commission

Thank the stars the Senate voted it down so the commission appointed by Obama will not have quite the teeth. If the bill to create the commission had passed it would have required their recommendations be voted up or down in their entirety. That would have sucked.

[Octafish]

73. If I wanted to be a wage slave all my life, I'd vote for the greedy ownership party.

Imagine my surprise when the candidate of my party says one thing and does another.

From way back in October:

US Fed Chairman Bernanke demands austerity

By Barry Grey
22 October 2009
WSWS.org

In remarks Monday to a conference on Asia and the global economic crisis held by the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank in Santa Barbara, California, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke called for austerity policies to rein in US budget deficits and the ballooning national debt.

In the name of reducing global economic imbalances between debtor countries with large trade deficits, such as the US, and creditor nations with large trade surpluses, such as China and Japan, Bernanke demanded that the US government adopt policies in the medium-term to cut domestic consumption and reduce social spending. At the same time, he called on China and other export-oriented Asian countries to reduce their trade and current account surpluses by encouraging a growth in domestic demand.

Bernanke declared that Asia was leading a world economic recovery, but warned that the recovery could not be allowed to produce a renewed growth of “unsustainable” imbalances in trade and capital flows. While couched in diplomatic and technical terminology, his remarks had definite and ominous implications for the working class, above all in the United States.

Reflecting the consensus within the American ruling elite, and the class policy of the Obama administration, the central bank chief was implicitly insisting that the economic crisis be used to carry through a drastic and permanent lowering of the wages and living standards of the American working class. In essence, the United States is to be transformed into a cheap-labor center for the export of industrial and other goods to the world market. The living standards and conditions of American workers are to be brought more closely into line with those of super-exploited workers in Asia.

At the San Francisco conference, attended by bankers and finance officials from the US and Asia, Bernanke said it was “extraordinarily urgent” that a new global economic balance be established. In reply to a question, he said the US faced a “difficult fiscal situation,” but said US policymakers had to “recognize that we need to develop a fiscal exit strategy” to rein in deficits expected to total $9 trillion over the next decade.

CONTINUED...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/oct2009/bern-o22.shtml

hen so much power and wealth is concentrated in so few hands,
it's not weird to think of the actuality of all those trillions
being stolen by warmongers and traitors.

What's weird is that this sort of thing isn't the law.

Oh.

[galileoreloaded]

3. You can get out exactly what you put in. Signed Ben Bernake.

[Neecy]

39. Will he give us 40+ years of interest, too?

[galileoreloaded]

41. Sure. You still won't make it last more than a couple years, thats the point.

He would LOVE to refund those accounts.

[Statistical]

84. Please.

An annuity could replace SS with much higher payments.

Only thing good about SS is it is guaranteed. If I could take a lump sum (with compounded interest at T-bond rates) I could take that lump sum and purchase an annuity that would pay me and my wife an amount about 30% higher than SS.

The idea that a lifetime of SS payments plus compounded interest won't last more than a few years is just silly.

[Octafish]

74. So, that means that each of my 1974 dollars today would be worth $5.....

Each unit of money went a lot further then, if memory serves.

[Statistical]

83. I got no problem with that. I'll take a lump sum with compounded interest please. n/t

[CaliforniaPeggy]

4. And off to the Greatest Page!

[Autumn]

7. That dirty scum bag piece

of shit needs to be gone.

[katandmoon]

8. K&R Obama is the biggest voting mistake I've ever made, even bigger than Bill Clinton.

[DisgustedInMN]

31. Sadly, I'm beginning to ...

.. think the same exact thing.

[BlueJac]

34. God damn right!!!

[phone]

[TankLV]

36. Me too - only at the time - the alternative was and still continues to be MUCH WORSE!!!

So far - he's LOST my vote - but I'll hsve to see what's put up against him next time around before I decide...

[peace frog]

42. Exactly

The alternative was too hideous to imagine, ie Grumpy Gramps McCain dies in office, sieg heil President Palin. :puke:

I'm still amazed at the breathtakingly complete about-face Obama has taken, from campaign promises to administration. I may or may not vote for him a secong time, but again it depends upon who the alternatives are.

[shireen]

68. +1

:(

[Bigmack]

10. You want to see Revolution???...

Just go ahead and fuck with the Social Security that people are getting... or about to get.

Us old farts think that our SS entitlement is chiseled into the stone right below the 10 Commandments. Comes right from Je-fucking-hova!

You will see little old blue-haired ladies in the streets with pitchforks!

[Foo Fighter]

18. Well, Dubya tried screwing with it and it backfired so now they're taking a

different approach.

Since their plan to hand over SS directly to Wall Street failed, they have decided* to just cut payouts and increase SS taxes in order to keep the system "solvent." This of course alleviates the problem of maybe, possibly, eventually making the direct beneficiaries of the transfer of the SS surplus to the "general fund" (the top 1%) pay back the money. No, much better to make the poor and working class pay back the debt owed by the top 1%. After all, the way they see it, that's our lot in life.

* No, the bill hasn't been officially written or passed yet. But it will be. They decided on this long ago, hence the past tense.

[upi402]

24. Why do righties buy the Ayn Rand laissez faire crap

when they're just going to get destroyed by it? Not taxing the folks who scooped in cash with both hands didn't work. Gee, I wonder why we don't try something else... oh yeah there's no opposition party to corporatism.

[truedelphi]

75. I too believe that this has been decided a long time ago.

And President Timothy Benjamin Obama will be just the one to help his friends Geithner and Bernanke do this to us.

[fascisthunter]

37. Not wishful thinking on my part, but you are right about this

I say we unleash this wraith to put the rich and powerful back in their place in humanity.

[Autumn]

46. They had better watch out for our canes,

some of us can really swing those.

[TheCowsCameHome]

76. +1

[Blue_In_AK]

12. Right on, as always, Octafish.

I can't believe the way they're trying to dismantle the New Deal right in front of our eyes. It's some scary times we're living in. We're getting social security now (my husband and I both took it early), but I don't trust that they won't yank it at any time. It pisses me off, too, when I paid in steadily from 1964 until just last year.

[Foo Fighter]

21. Oh sure, rub it in. ;)

"We're getting social security now..."

Hell, I can only dream of the day when I will collect SS. Unfortunately, I'm in that group that has paid in for many years but those damn boomers just ahead of me took all the money so I should just blame everything on them because, as everyone knows, they're real the problem here.

Yeah, those damn taxpayers that paid into the system all their lives and are now collecting are the whole reason the system is going bust. The purported SS crisis has nothing to do with the raid of the SS fund to pay for the tax breaks on the top 1%. No, it's all the damn Senior Citizen's fault and the sooner people start seeing that, the sooner the PTB will have yet another group to pit against the others in the never-ending battle of pointing the blame at everyone but the real culprits for the trashing of the economy, the top 1%.

[Blue_In_AK]

25. Indeed.

They always talk in dire tones about all the boomers cashing in now, but they fail to mention that, since there were so many of us, we've been swelling the coffers all these years. We contributed a HUGE amount of money. Where the hell is it?

[Foo Fighter]

78. Yeah, they always seem to forget that little bit about the huge number of

boomers paying in all those years.

If the problem with the boomers retiring is that there will be fewer people paying into the system than collecting, what about all those years where the boomers were paying in and there were MORE people paying in than collecting? Seems to me there should be some sort of surplus should have accrued during that time that would carry over when the boomers retired but apparently not. They spent it all on tax breaks for the rich and corporations.

So, I guess the boomers are just supposed to suck it up and take a smaller payout. The post-boomers are just supposed to accept that they will never see a dime of the money they paid in. Nice system for those at the top that raided the coffers. For the rest of us, not so much.

But in the end, it's really our fault. We should have read the fine print. FICA stands for "Funneling Income to the Corporations and Aristocrats." That should have been our first clue.

[customerserviceguy]

56. Boomer signing in here

and I don't expect to get squat out of it when my time comes (I'm 54 now). By the way, the very oldest boomers were born in 1946, making them just 64 this year, and if any of them are collecting it, they're either disabled, or only been taking reduced benefits for the last year or two.

I started making a real income (not just paper route or fast-food preparer money) right as Jimmy Carter started raising the FICA taxes. My generation was the only reason the system survived until now.

But, in every Ponzi scheme, somebody's gotta be left holding the bag, I guess that's me and my fellow Boomers.

[amandabeech]

62. Actually, so long as there is money coming in, money will go out.

I'm 54, too, but I expect reduced benefits.

Social security would be relatively easy to fix by upping the cap and putting at least a surcharge on all income above the cap, perhaps even with a progressive feature.

I would also like to see a social security and medicare surcharge on capital gains above a modest amount.

The way I see it, folks at the top have taken far too much of the money out of the system since Reagan, and have invested a lot of it in such a way as to pay only capital gains taxes. One of the reasons that social security needs a fix is because a lesser percentage of U.S. personal income is subject to the social security tax than was envisioned even 10 or 15 years ago. One way to recoup the taxes that should have been paid to social security if a fair and reasonable amount of compensation had been paid to all economic contributors, including those in the bottom half of the income distribution.

[customerserviceguy]

66. If Social Security were funded out of the general budget

then it wouldn't simply be funded from a tax on work, and on people who pay people to work. We'd have it paid for by capital gains, rental profits, interest, dividends, and other sorts of taxable income.

[amandabeech]

70. I don't think that you'd have to do it on the general budget.

But you and I agree on where extra money can be had.

Of course, cutting the defense department down to size would help everything.

[Blue_In_AK]

81. I started getting it in November 2008

when I turned 62 (my birthday is the end of September). I had been self-employed since 2000 as a legal transcriptionist, but the person I subcontracted with dropped one of her main contracts toward the end of 2008, and it just seemed like a good time for me to do something else (photography). I'm getting about $300 a month less than I would have if I had waited to collect until 67 or whatever it is, but with my severely declining income, it just seemed like the thing to do.

[Foo Fighter]

14. That's a horrendous misrepresentation of what Bernanke said.

Damn hater. ;)

What he said: "That's where the money is."

What he meant: "That's where money of the first $100,000 in income of the 'wage earners' is. And it's not like anyone in DC gives a damn about the wage earners anyway so screw 'em. Let's just take their money."

[Union Yes]

15. knr Fuck Bernanke and his ilk.

[Jack Sprat]

16. They want it all, my friend. Sorry to say. n/t

[pa28]

17. This is outside of his scope.

He's fighting very hard to deny any kind of Congressional audit of the Fed by arguing independence. Why is he commenting on matters of government and "reminding" Congress they can repeal SS?

Scary, the thought of Bernanke being an idea man for SS reform. I've got thirty years before I begin collecting and a ton in the system. I'm guessing if Bernanke had his way I'd be forced to take a buyout at fire sale rates.

[leftstreet]

20. K&R

[flyarm]

23. K&R great thread Octafish!! n/t

[vssmith]

27. Let me paraphrase George Carlin

They are coming after your Social Security and your pension and they are going to get it. They want more for themselves and less for you.


"It's called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it."
-George Carlin

[old mark]

28. The Pres yesterday talked about raising the cap on contributions for the rich,

which will eliminate any forseeable problems with the trust fund.

I don't see any plans to "raid" SS at all. not by the Dems, at any rate....

GOPers still want to give it all to the banks and the stock traders. Wouldn't THAT be a grand idea....


mark
Also on SS.

[laughingliberal]

54. He will let the deficit commission take the heat for cutting SS

He knows it's coming. And he'll keep his fingerprints off it as much as possible. After all, it was just a fluke we found out about his deal with Billy Tauzin.

[Bitwit1234]

29. I just don't know how Obama who we all still admire

COULD LET US DOWN LIKE THIS. How can he do the things a republican would do. Is he the BLUE DOG LEADER.

[jeanpalmer]

30. They've been raiding it for years

to the tune of $3 trillion. That's how much should be in the trust fund. It's money we've paid in over the years over and above what has been required for making current SS payments. But it's all been spent. All we have is $3 trillion of IOU's. Totally worthless. And they have the gall to say that SS is the problem. On several occasions, Congress passed increases in payroll taxes purportedly to buttress SS. And they spent that too.

Obama is raiding SS right now. In his new budget, he is spending every penny of excess SS payroll taxes coming in. Using it to fund other items in the budget.

It's amazing how defense spending never comes up in discussions about places to cut spending. And yet it is the most obvious place to cut.

[FarCenter]

32. Social security current taxes mostly go to pay current benefits

It is mostly an income transfer plan from workers to retirees and SSI beneficiaries.

It is not an investment, where money from the workers salary is saved in an investment for later disbursement to the worker.

[Bluenorthwest]

38. Then how odd is it that they turn around and take it back

from retirees by taxing those same benefits, as they do and always have done. Some sort of 'transfer' that is! More like a merry go round, in which the Government takes, gives, takes again. Sure not the picture you want to paint.

[FarCenter]

44. I you are single with income < 25K or married < 32 K, SS is not taxed

It is all part of the progressive income tax system, where people with higher incomes are taxed more. In effect, it is reducing SS benefits to higher income people and making the SS system "means tested" to a degree.

[JDPriestly]

47. Social Security is like any other insurance plan.

The benefits are paid from the premiums. Insurance plans have reserves which they invest in order to make money. That's the way these things work. Most people try to save some money for retirement on top of Social Security. The problem is that the crash of 2008 wiped a lot of those savings out. And the increase in the stock market hasn't really helped small investors, especially older investors who put their money in "safe" places like interest-bearing accounts. That is because Bernanke is keeping the interest rates so low.

On a small retirement account of about $13,000, I earned $1 in interest in December. Don't every think that, as an ordinary person, you could save enough to retire on if you saved only in private accounts or investments. That is only possible if you are earning a lot of money or if you have no responsibilities, say you have no children, live in one house and pay it off over the years and live very frugally most of your life.

Most people meet serious misfortune at one point or another in their life -- a lost job, a failed business, a natural disaster, bad health . . . . Nearly everyone you meet has to deal with setbacks. If you are born with a big trust fund, you can handle it, but most of us just work all our lives and barely make ends meet. Thank God for Social Security. If it hadn't been invented, it would have to be invented now. I have a number of friends in their 50s and 60s who either have lost jobs or businesses and homes or are in the process of losing them. These are bad times, very bad times. We need Social Security more than ever.

Remember, most Social Security benefits go into the seniors' hands and then almost directly into the economy.

[FarCenter]

59. Social security is like term life insurance, where current premiums pay current beneficiaries

It is not like whole life, where the higher premium covers both immediate beneficiaries plus a part that is invested to pay the increasing balances on policies that have been in force for a number of years.

Social security looks like it was set up to discourage saving. If workers actually saved at 10% to 20% rate that would be needed to accumulate savings for retirement, there would be a lot of capital accumulated looking for debt and equity investments.

The creditor class would be hurt two ways: return on investments would drop markedly due to the accumulation of capital, and the creditor class would grow and the debtor class would shrink. This is not in the interests of the creditor class. They would natually prefer that the creditor class stay small and exclusive and that the return on their investments stay high.

People could actually save 10 to 20% of their income. Most people know someone making 10 to 20% less than they do. So all that would be required is to live the lifestyle of that person. Except for very recent immigrants to this country, very few people ar willing to be this frugal.

Actually, social security does have a trust fund to smooth out changes in payments due to demographic variations. However, this is put in Treasury Bonds. In this way the government borrows the tax reciepts from social security and spends them on current consumption, thereby preventing the buildup of excess capital due to the SS trust fund.

[JDPriestly]

60. Saving for retirement is great if you make a decent income.

But saving for retirement cannot and never will replace Social Security.

Right now, I am retired. My husband and I tried to save, but it isn't as easy as you might think, not if you earn modest salaries, have children and perhaps a medical emergency or two.

When my husband started working in the late 1960s, his salary of about $14,000 per year was considered to be more than adequate -- good even. If you invested 10% of that, you might or might not have a lot of money today. Many people were lured into mutual fund or stock market investments in the 1980s and 90s. Ask the folks who trusted Bernie Madoff how that worked out. The other retirement investment funds are not much better. Saving your money in a bank earns next to no interest. Only those who saved in the early 1980s made anything on interest. Putting money in the stock market is a gamble. The stock market crashes every few years.

Most baby boomers "saved" by investing in their homes (real estate, so to speak). Well, we know how that ended up.

If the economy is good, everyone does well. But since we began to permit unfettered importation of cheap junk, jobs are not available and our overall economy has gone from bad to worse. Until and unless we start placing a tax burden on imports that is equal to the tz burden placed on domestic products, we will not recover and our investments or savings will not earn anything.

[Yurovsky]

79. Good point, & most companies are abandoning pensions for 401k plans...

so they're off the hook and workers are at the mercy of the stock market.

Retirees of today will fare much better than the retirees of 40 or 50 years hence.

I worry about my kids and how they'll make ends meet in their "golden years".

[jeanpalmer]

69. Most of the money is an income transfer

but a significant amount -- about $3 trillion -- was overcollected over the years with the idea it would be used in the later years when the program would be taking in less than current benefits. $3 trillion is a large sum -- larger than the Federal Budget until recently. I believe last year SS collected ~$800 billion in payroll taxes but only paid out ~$600 billion. So you can see that the politicians are using the excess collections as general revenue, which is a fraud. They see it as a revenue raiser for things other than SS. Like budget deficits, the abuse started small and now it's large scale. $3 trillion would pay for 5 years' worth of current benefits without a single payroll tax collected. Instead, the crooked politicians have spent it almost exclusively on war and now are talking about cutting SS. For the life of me, I can't believe how complacently people, especially Democrats, are taking it, so far. And they can't seem to make the connectiuon between lack of health care/SS reductions and military spending. It's sickening to see the threads of people hyping Afghanistan and the capture of this mud hut or that big time Taliban leader. These pro-war Democrats obviously don't know what they're doing to themselves and their kids.

[BlueJac]

33. Hey, that is Obama's man.......

we are finally getting the change we can believe in. Get into the feeling, next up is dropping all other social programs. WAR baby! that is what we are all about.

[lonestarnot]

40. NO fucking shit!

K & R to heaven and back!

[Odin2005]

43. I get half my income from SSI. They will take it from my cold, dead hands.

[rhett o rick]

45. Dont temp them. nt

[ooglymoogly]

49. Social Security is the last pot of gold.

The first step to stealing it is to privatize it; Then all that will be left to steal is the gold in "We the peoples" teeth.

[G_j]

53. K&R

[TheUnspeakable]

55. k&r

[tex-wyo-dem]

57. Another great post, Octafish! k&r!

I'm quite certain now that when dubya was pushing to "reform" SS back in 2005 that the reason was not only to keep the gravy train rolling for the PTB, but to avert the crash of 2008...at least until W left office. They knew the crash was coming (it's rediculous to think they didn't see it coming due to the tremendous amount of bad debt), and raiding SS was the only thing that could possibly keep their ponzi scheme afloat. It's the same reason they're doing it now, not because of some made up "SS is broken" horseshit! The fix for SS is relatively easy (raise the threshhold and/or tax the wealthy)...the fix for the broken global economy, not so easy.

[gulfcoastliberal]

58. K&R nt

[invictus]

61. K&R

[upi402]

64. Workers, meat or pet?

Just asking...

:grr:

[shireen]

67. WHY was this jerk reappointed to another term?!

The Senate, with exception of a few, is a collection of disgustingly corrupt and pathetic losers. It's horrible.

[AzDar]

71. K & R

:kick:

[maryf]

77. K&R, so will this be the cause that joins the right and left??

Tax the Rich!! Thanks!!

[madrchsod]

80. there is`t politician what wants to be elected or reelected....

that would vote for doing away with social security.

bernie can say what ever he likes but it`s not going to happen.