On 8/4/2011 7:55 AM, HeyBub wrote:
zzzzzzzzzz wrote:

It IS a separate fund. Funds received by SSA go into a pile called
the Social Security Trust Fund. Those funds are prudently invested
in U.S. Treasury bonds (which pay interest). The governors of the SS
Trust Fund can redeem these bonds anytime they wish.

Today, there is about $2 trillion in the Social Security Trust Fund
- in the form of U.S. Treasury Bonds.

To redeem them, the government must first borrow the money. There's
a problem here...

Actually, no. I'm not exactly sure how this works, but if SSA redeems a
bond, the indebtedness of the U.S. goes DOWN as they pay the bond in
funny-money. The U.S. does not have to borrow anything to redeem a SSA bond.

When the SS trust fund buys a Treasury Bond, the money goes from the SS
Trust Fund to the say, General Fund. The General fund spends all this
money and then some. The "then some" amounts to around $12 Trillion,
soon to be DECREASED to $14 trillion (Government Math).

If the SS fund wants to cash in one of their treasury bonds, the general
fund, which is 12 trillion in the hole, has to borrow the money
somewhere else, say China, or print more money (funny money). Now, all
this money is simply clicks on a keyboard, since no money, funny or not,
really transfers into anything other than a ledger entry on some funky
computer.

We could fix everything just by moving some decimal points 6 or 10
digits to the left....like this: 12,000,000,000,000 is now 1200, so
problem solved...

--
Jack
You Can't Fix Stupid, but You Can Vote it Out!
http://jbstein.com