Larry Kotlikoff: Detroit just filed for bankruptcy, endangering, among other things, the pensions and health care benefits of 21,000 municipal retirees. But Detroit didn’t just go bankrupt. It’s been bankrupt for years. Yet no one, particularly its accountants and actuaries who spent years cooking the books, was paid to admit it.
Washington is also bankrupt and has been for years. Just like Detroit, successive administrations and Congresses from both parties have spent decades hiding the real magnitude of our county’s fiscal liabilities.
The debt Uncle Sam publicly acknowledges — official federal debt in the hands of the public — is now $12 trillion. But the true measure of our debt — the one suggested by economic theory — is the fiscal gap, which totals $222 trillion. The fiscal gap is the present value of all future expenditures, including servicing outstanding official federal debt, minus the present value of all future receipts.
Detroit’s main means of hiding its true liabilities was discounting its future obligations at a rate far higher than appropriate, thus giving the appearance that less saving was needed to cover the shortfall.
Washington’s dirtier trick has been to keep virtually all of its future liabilities off the books, which creates the vast ocean separating the fiscal gap and the official debt. Decisions about what debts to put on and what debts to keep off the books are not grounded in economics; this duplicitous accounting is grounded in linguistics.
The different checks my 68-year-old friend Paul receives from the U.S. Treasury are a good example. Except for the amounts, the greenish-yellowish checks are identical, with “U.S. Treasury” printed in majestic old English font and a lovely engraving of the Statue of Liberty. One of these periodic checks is for Paul’s Social Security benefits. The other is for interest and principal on his U.S. Treasury bonds. Each comes like clockwork. Each is owed to Paul in every economically meaningful sense.
The difference between the two is that the present value of the checks for interest and principal is carried on the government’s books, whereas the present value of the checks for Social Security benefits is not.
If anything, the Social Security benefits, and not the Treasury bond payments, should be recorded as official debt. The chances that Uncle Sam will renege on Paul’s Treasury bonds (large gobs of which are held by Chinese and other foreigners), via inflation if not outright default, are much greater than the chances it will stop paying his Social Security benefits. If you doubt this, ask the 38 million American voters organized with the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) how they’d react to a cut in their Social Security benefits.
There are only two solutions: default or hyper-inflation. We can either start over from scratch, or issue $10 trillion notes like they do in Zimbabwe. There is no way, and there never will be any way, for Americans to “pay off” a national debt of this magnitude. It’s all phony bookkeeping and made-up digits in cyberspace. It wasn’t designed to be paid off, but to create permanent debt servitude.
Even the ancient Romans had “jubilees” every 50 years or so, where the accumulated unpayable public debt was wiped out and the slate cleaned. The per capita share of the national debt for every man, woman and child is more money than they will ever see in their working lives.
Obama is doing what he came to do but will he get to finish what he wanted to do? He planned to bring this Nation to the brink of doom and he's doing that very successfully with our Republican House that won't fight back. He's filling the Nation with illegals that will be on the dole. The 3 dreamers crossing back into Mexico spread the word about claiming asylum and now hundreds of illegals are swarming across the border with the right words in their mouths and taxpayers are having to putt them up in hotels.
Will Obama get a restart of the US that he wants? A Communist restart? Over many dead bodies but with his illegal army and the guns Homeland Security and IRS bought they just might get the job done.
AARP is the left wing list. What about credit to AMAC, the conservative side of the list. Oh! I forgot the lib writing this has not a clue. A ARP is declining in members because of their "in bed with the Dem's on this subject" stance. What you have failed to note is the Dems have been actively discussing "means testing" as a way to strip white and working Americans of their SS payments in the future so they can give it to those who haven't contributed, have not contributed enough, or are illegally collecting as part of the Amnesty programs. Sorry, you will get a major revolt if this happens if not outright civil war from those who have contributed and would be millionaires today if they just had their share, not the employer share to invest under their control. It is anothe ways to BUY VOTES from the Dems. It is illegal folks and I strongly advise you get the SS house back into shape and the welfare and vote buying elements out of the system promptly. A major class action suit is brewing!
I disagree with your first statement. There is a third solution and the one that appears to be being set up for implementation. The Obamacare death panels are but one of the tools available to euthanize the useless eaters who are drawing their Social Security Checks like clockwork, even after they are dead. We see reported cases of fraud on a frequent basis.
In the Future Farmers Education curriculum utilized in the mid 60's, we were taught that for every rat we saw around farm buildings, there were about forty unseen vermin. If the same ratio formula is applied to fraudulent Social Security cases, we have a substantial amount.
As least most mandatory euthanization orders issued by the death panels are likely to have their payments stopped; that won't terminate their Democratic Party voting rights.
This solution will probably be conjoined with one of the solutions you mentioned. Here in the Pacific Northwest, we have used a lumber harvesting technique called 'clear cutting'. For the Obamacare panels to decide to make arbitrary decisions to 'clear cut' a particular block of recipients based on any number of criterion is not unrealistic. It seems to me they would have the authority to compel them to move to Oregon where they can be compelled to receive a dose of the 'death with dignity' prescription medicines.
With the unconstitutional power this president has already displayed pursuant to Executive Orders; I don't see that tyrant as being bound by any moral conscience. Islam is not the religion of peace; it is the religion of death.
Democrats lie, republicans lie. Why? Because all governments lie. They always have and always will so just take what you can while you can and protect what you have as well as possible.
All this BS reminds me of when my Dad passed, we shared the same name-got a bill for his life insurance, right after I had just cashed my survivors check-FROM THE SAME COMPANY!-musta been run by the gvmt
Just refuse to be held as a slave. It's as simple as that. I own nobody 'interest' on this debt, and I owe NOBODY a social security payment. The IRS is the only thing standing in the way of a total collapse.
Only Ron Paul was telling the truth.
Your third, “final”, solution is of course the one of big government. Hospitals have been practicing an informal form of the “Obamacare death panels” for years: I’ve had loved ones and friends of loved ones be admitted for routine procedures and never come out alive (or else be discharged with infections from shoddy standards & practices that eventually killed them anyway).
While I am no fan or supporter of Obama, he is merely the culmination of a longrange plan for the disposal of us “useless eaters”. The phrase was coined by Heinz Kissinger, who is Jewish. And “New World Order” was introduced in a speech by the quintessentially Protestant George H.W. Bush. So your cheap shot at Islam really doesn’t wash.
We're missing the road-map to destruction. The death of capitalism is a path of zero interest rates, consumption incentives, and run-away inflation. Investment is punished to the hilt and punished again by taxation. Run a simple ROI application to the CPI index – a 1965 dollar is worth 14 cents and it took $6.94 to buy $1 worth of those goods at the end of 2011! Couple it with a churning of production based cash into consumption based bonds where money disappears faster than you could burn it… and collapse is inevitable. A US banking system that pays depositors zero interest also invests those funds in the global corporations that built the Chinese Communist Empire by sliding assets and capital from here to there tax free (GE) –to “jointly manage the communist slave labor force”. The icons are Obama, GE, Bloggo & Madoff. SSI with widows, disabled, etc ($1,255 @ 1.418% = $1752/mo avg.) requires 2.713% not 12.4%. Don’t punish the rape victim – jail the rapists!!!
If you invest 12.4% of $42,537/yr (BLS avg wage dec., 2012) – $439.55/month @ 5% compounded (0.40667%/mo) from 18 to 65th birthday (46 years) you would have $941,686 cash that would pay $8,005/mo for 13.5 years (avg age 78.5) – total payback is $1,296,880! That's what SSI should payback.
We're missing the road-map to destruction. The death of capitalism is a path of zero interest rates, consumption incentives, and run-away inflation. Investment is punished to the hilt and punished again by taxation. Run a simple ROI application to the CPI index – a 1965 dollar is worth 14 cents and it took $6.94 to buy $1 worth of those goods at the end of 2011! Couple it with a churning of production based cash into consumption based bonds where money disappears faster than you could burn it… and collapse is inevitable. A US banking system that pays depositors zero interest also invests those funds in the global corporations that built the Chinese Communist Empire by sliding assets and capital from here to there tax free (GE) –to “jointly manage the communist slave labor force”. The icons are Obama, GE, Bloggo & Madoff.
Government inflation geometrically devalues the investment, especially when benefits are inflation indexed while investments rapidly rot over a "Ponzi’s lifetime". Ponzi means invested funds are used to pay benefits… a crime everywhere but at the executive-legislative levels of federal government!
SSI funds were $2.4 trillion Dec., 2012 if memory is correct (bankrupt & paying benefits with deposits) -funds would be well over $100 trillion if 1/2 funded @ workforce. Prior 5 yr avg interest reported was appx. 5% – bonds printed by thieves can yield whatever they want them to yield – same effects with counterfeit cash or the payday loan bonds (T-bill) they print if any money is left over after paying benefits. It's worth getting angry, prosecuting, & sending some of the lying rats off to jail, but we have to prosecute & jail Holder & the sneaky counterfeiters first.
par 3 got doubled up – sorry about that – gremlins are progressive