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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (159784)	7/10/2001 10:28:42 PM
From: DMaA	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

What do you think the SS administration would do with the checks it receives otherwise? Cash them and put the bills in a huge Scrooge McDuck vault? Treasury has borrowed the payroll tax revenue that was supposed to go into the Social Security Trust Fund, to the tune of more than $100 billion dollars per year. This is why the Treasury Secretary says "We have no assets" in the Social Security Trust Fund.

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (159784)	7/10/2001 10:38:23 PM
From: gao seng	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

I will be brief. He is saying that T-bills are not assets. Because if the nation goes bankrupt, well, then T-bills are worthless. That is why I think we should spend the surplus on gold. But without bankruptcy, those T-bills are a good investment. If you put 2,000 a year in an account that draws 6% in 40 years you have a million dollars. That's 50k a year for ever at 5%. SS doesn't even approach that. edit: The statement "The trust fund has billions of assets invested in the form of Treasury bonds" is correct. And these bonds pay interest. But they are non-marketable. So who do you sell them to? Yourself. Where does the country get the money to pay to buy them back so you can pay SS? <snip>While supporters of the Social Security system agree the government will be faced with coming up with actual money to redeem the non-marketable securities, they argue that those securities represent real obligations of the federal government and a failure to redeem the bonds would constitute a default by the government on its obligations. </snip>