Alan Simpson on Feeding Bananas to Congress
What do you think of his position on the failure on Congress to address our current deficit?
If you have a nest egg and believe that this crisis is going to happen sooner rather than later, where do you invest your nest egg for security? Or do you bury it in the backyard?
Just wondering.
What exactly are you going to “bury in your backyard?” Paper money? If we have a financial crisis, a bunch of $100 bills stuffed under your mattress is going to be the most insecure investment ever. You’d have to bury commodities (such as, you know, gold). Or whatever.
It all depends on what you think is going to happen. In a general financial meltdown, sure, your stocks and bonds (your investments) could become worthless. And so can the dollar. In which case, you need assets. But your assets can become worthless too. If you invested in real estate lately you probably lost a lot of money.
However, buying a bunch of gold right now is a pretty bold move. Gold is very high. Maybe it will keep on getting higher. But the likelihood is that the price of gold is going to collapse. Buy high, sell low is a pretty shitty way to invest.
I think the debt is being blown out of proportion as an issue. Seriously. And the Republicans are the ones huffing and puffing, for the most part. Considering that, going back to Reagan and extending to Cheney, the Republican view when THEY are in power, has always been that debt is HEALTHY or at least not a problem, they are being disengenuous.
The realty is that they are only concerned about the debt now that a Democrat is in the White House, and much of the spending/borrowing going on is to fund programs and policies directed towards “social programs” and the benefit of the poor, the working poor and the middle class.
Kevin Phillips long ago documented the Republican strategy in this regard:
Spend like a drunken sailor when you control the purse strings (on war, tax cuts for the rich and corporations, pork to your cronies, etc…)
Build up huge debt (which you justify as unavoidable and dismiss as no big deal…growing the economy will pay it off quickly)
Drain the treasury (tax cuts, see above, debt, ditto)
So that when you eventually lose power, you leave the incoming Democratic administration with tied hands…huge debt, depleted revenues…and THEN you start crying and screaming about the debt and runaway government spending.
You suddenly become the party of fiscal responsibility vs. the “tax and spend liberals”.
The agenda is not only to enrich your base/cronies (e.g. rob the coffers dry) but to seek to prevent the Democrats from directing any spending towards “social-ist” programs you (and your base…big business, the rich) generally oppose.
One might dismiss this scenario as wild partisan conspiracy theory if not for the fact that the pattern is easily confirmed (Phillips, a former Republican operative under Nixon, traces the phenomenon back several decades in his book “The Politics of Rich and Poor”).
Obama was left with a huge economic crisis, the direct result of policies the administration preceding him enacted, and so forced to either spend MORE to try and stop the bleeding/stimulate the failing economy or not and allow it to go the rest of the way to hell. He rightly realizes that to slash spending NOW and focus on the debt is the exact opposite of what must be done to grow the economy (which is not only vital to the nation and its people but the KEY to paying off the debt…as revenues increase, the debt melts away, same thing the Republicans know but only acknowledge when THEY are in power).
Also, re’ the article, ask yourself why Social Security keeps being brought up as if it had ANYTHING to do with the debt. It doesn’t. It is funded through dedicated taxes and via a trust fund. And Republican propaganda aside, it is quite solvent and will continue to be for decades even without economic growth. It currently has well over a trillion dollars in SURPLUS.
The Republicans have been trying to destroy SS since its inception, and they are still at it. Not only do they seek to eliminate it because it represents a very successful, government-operated SOCIAL program that flies in the face of their ideology…
they also want to get their hands on that surplus…the best way to do that is to get it lumped in with the general budget and then to argue that it represents an egregious percentage of government spending and to move towards privatizing it (code for redistributing its wealth to the private sector where it will be vulnerable to white collar theft, as has happened to so many of the private pension funds).
Simpson states, in the article, that nothing he is doing wrt SS affects anyone younger than 70, and that is pure and utter bullshit. It affects EVERYONE of any age who either currently relies on SS or someday hopes to. A fairly large percentage of those currently receiving SS benefits are well below 70, including many widows/widowers and children getting death benefits (myself and my kids, ftr) and the disabled.
If I HAD a significant amount of money to worry about (ha) I would probably sink it into actual THINGS…real estate/land for one…and perhaps government bonds (which are, right-wing nonsense aside, still about the most secure investment around).
InterestedObserver it’s my humble opinion that both parties are involved in the systematic looting of America. The labels change from time to time and election to election, but their actions speak louder than their words.
Lemur866 you hit the nail on the head. I do believe our current monetary system is on the verge of collapse. What we hold currently in CD’s or mutual funds will become worthless.
While gold has been a traditional shelter, I too find the current price unrealistic. For those who might hold similar beliefs, what do we do? What will be the best medium of exchange after the next financial crisis?