Social Security Going Negative, Now

Add another log to the "inevitable inflation" fire: Social Security going negative now, not later. Because of our current debt deflation depression, revenues have fallen far, far faster than anticipated. Not only are revenues falling, many people are transferring their unemployment problem onto the Social Security system, as unemployment gets translated into early retirement and disability payments. The SS tax is not going to bring in enough to cover current SS payments, as soon as next year officially, probably right now in reality.

Remember, the SS Trust Fund is not a fund, and you certainly can't trust it. It is just an accounting trick. The SS tax money has been going into the general fund, helping mask the deficit, for years. The SS Trust Fund is simply a Treasury promise to pay.

Ok, so how will they pay, now that the SS tax is no longer sufficient to meet the SS payments? Raise the tax? Lower benefits? Those would take political will. Most likely: just print the money, driving up the debt and adding to the deficit, which is INHERENTLY INFLATIONARY!

It boggles my mind how the press stories continue to obfuscate and misinform. The AP article says, "The deficits — $10 billion in 2010 and $9 billion in 2011 — won't affect payments to retirees because Social Security has accumulated surpluses from previous years totaling $2.5 trillion."

They continue to push the mistaken idea that there is a surplus of money somewhere, a build up of cash that is waiting to be drawn down. The whole thing is a complete scam, abetted by people's economic and accounting ignorance. The article says, " Without a new fix, the $2.5 trillion in Social Security's trust funds will be exhausted in 2037. Those funds have actually been spent over the years on other government programs. They are now represented by government bonds, or IOUs, that will have to be repaid as Social Security draws down its trust fund."

So, how much sense does it make that the government can give a bond to another wing of government? It only seems to make sense as a linguistic sentence, it has no economic reality behind it whatsoever. Real translation: the money was taken in, it was spent, it is gone, there is no such thing as a trust fund. There is only a promise to pay, that is all, with no actual money to do the paying.

That is the psychology of hyperinflation. The refusal to cut budgets, the refusal to face reality. The money will be printed, there is no doubt.




http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h6BfoloJOnV0TeI7eIHC1ZWuBxygD9AVS0202