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Strategies & Market Trends : The Options Box -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mishedlo who wrote (9738)	2/27/2001 6:25:27 PM
From: hobo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10876

More than one way to skin a cat.... (or, we need no steeeeenking interest rates cut) If this flies... (and depending how is it structured in the end...) This could make shorting the market a little precarious, (at least for a while), since a mountain of money could be awaiting to be "allocated" Fundamentals be damned. Never mind returning the punch ball to investors with a prayer of lower interest rates. Better yet, spike the liquid with this acid... Casino Royale part II (or AMZN @ 400 again ? ) dailynews.yahoo.com Monday February 26 11:51 PM ET Bush to Seek Social Security 'Personal Accounts' By Randall Mikkelsen WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush (news - web sites) will advocate allowing workers to invest part of their Social Security taxes in personal accounts when he gives his first speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, White House officials said. ``He will get into the reasons for creating personal accounts,'' a senior White House official said. Such ``personal retirement accounts,'' as advocated by Bush during his presidential campaign last year, would allow workers to invest a portion of their payroll taxes in stocks or bonds with an aim toward capturing historically higher returns earned by such investments. Another aide said Bush's budget proposal to Congress on Wednesday would outline plans to set aside a fund close to $1 trillion that could be used to finance the accounts. Part of the money would come from tapping a $600 billion portion of Social Security retirement system surpluses anticipated over the next 10 years. The rest would come from surpluses in the general budget. The Washington Post reported in Tuesday editions that Bush would appoint a high-level commission to try to forge consensus for the controversial idea. This strategy would allow the Bush administration to build momentum for the entitlement reforms and buy time for the education and tax proposals that he has asked lawmakers to adopt first, the Post said, quoting administration officials. A key Democrat said on Monday that all of the Social Security surpluses should be used to pay down debt. ``They're talking about raiding the Social Security trust fund to fund privatization in part. That's double-dipping. That's double-counting. That's exactly what's going to get us into trouble,'' North Dakota Sen. Kent Conrad (news - bio - voting record), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, told reporters. State Of The Union-Style Speech Bush told reporters on Monday that he planned to talk about Social Security in his State of the Union-style speech to Congress on Tuesday. His budget director, Mitch Daniels, said on Sunday that Bush would say problems in the Social Security and Medicare systems ``won't wait,'' and that action was needed ``right away.'' White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card said on Sunday that of $2.6 trillion in anticipated Social Security system surpluses over the next 10 years, $2 trillion would be used to pay down debt. The rest would be used to help fund the Social Security personal accounts, aides said on Monday. Former President Clinton (news - web sites), in the last two years of his presidency, also proposed a form of partial Social Security privatization. Under his plan, the government would have invested up to $700 billion in equities through private managers, with the money to come from surpluses in the non-Social Security portion in the budget. But he shelved the plan in May 2000, leaving Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore (news - web sites) a clear field to attack Bush's campaign proposal as a threat to the retirement system. Gore said Bush's plan, which proposed allowing individuals to set aside about 2 percent of payroll taxes in accounts they would manage privately, would divert money from the Social Security system and threaten future benefits.