Disability Law

Economic Free Fall: Who Thinks We Should Revisit Privatization?

If there is one recurring nightmare for Social Security attorneys who study the question, it is the idea of privatizing Social Security. How anyone can even dream that this is a good idea after the performance of the stock market in 2008 is beyond most of us. The investment of public and private retirement money should be the most secure, conservative , fail-safe investment structure available. Setting up privatization is a recipe for paying fees to management companies - a favorite agenda of those folks who just pushed us off the economic cliff, where we are in free fall off a ski jump, hoping to grab some air to right ourselves. Here is an article that suggests that the solutions to the economic crisis should not be formed on the backs of the people injured by it.

…”There are a number of great articles and opinion pieces today on Social Security ?reform? and the so-called ?grand bargain? anti-entitlement crusaders are hoping to elicit from the Obama administration as they consider short-term stimulus legislation.

First, economist Dean Baker with the Center for Economic and Policy Research puts the whole issue in perspective wonderfully in this piece in the Guardian:

The classic definition of ?chutzpah? is the kid who kills both of his parents and then begs for mercy because he is an orphan. The Wall Street crew are out to top this. After wrecking the economy with their convoluted finances, and tapping the US Treasury for trillions in bail-out bucks, they now want to cut Social Security and Medicare because we don?t have the money.

The attacks are made even worse by the fact that the attackers, people like Robert Rubin and Peter Peterson, promoted policies that led to this collapse and personally profited to the tune of tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. In other words, after pushing the economy into a severe recession and destroying the life?s savings of tens of millions of working families, the Wall Street crew now wants to take away their Social Security and Medicare. This can almost make killing your parents look like a petty offence.? See more info here:
And then, under this link here is a good collection of articles on the privatization debate:

Full post as published by Social Security Disability Law Blog on January 25, 2009 (boomark / email).