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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: neolib who wrote (215403)	1/19/2005 3:22:51 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573683

Neolib, I'm left with the feeling that you see a difference in investment quality between T-bills and the special treasury notes help by the SS Admin. In terms of accounting, as long as we account for all of it properly (e.g. by stating the true deficit and not counting SS benefits and revenues as part of general budget), there is no real difference. The only problem I have is the fact that government chooses the investment vehicle for the SS "trust fund." Of course, the only investment vehicle that makes sense in this case would be T-bills, but as noted before, that only fuels the federal government's thirst for more spending and bigger government. And to me, that's a sort of "conflict of interest" that needs to be addressed. Tenchusatsu

To: neolib who wrote (215403)	2/2/2005 8:01:12 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573683

My objection to posts from both Tim and you is I'm left with the feeling that you see a difference in investment quality between T-bills and the special treasury notes help by the SS Admin. The only important difference that I see is that the special notes are owed by the government to itself. If I hold treasury notes its an asset for me. If the government holds federal government debt of any kind it isn't really an asset, or to look at it another way its an asset that also represents and exactly equal liability. If it just all netted out to zero it wouldn't be such a big deal but what nets out to zero is the assets that the government is supposed to use to pay back current and future retirees, which is a problem if the net value of that "asset" to the government as a whole is zero. Tim