Greespan says he is for anything that raises net national savings

...well the proposed Bush Social Security privatization plan fails to accomplish that end. An increase in net national savings (NNS also referred to as net domestic savings) by definition requires that income must exceed consumption. So to accomplish that both productivity and wages must increase faster than inflation. That means that social security recipients will have to take the lesser neutral index adjustment based on CPI which is totally different and much lower from the market basket price inflation of seniors. Thus, non-retired working wages will rise at a faster pace relative to social security recipients. That sounds like a widening poverty gap to me. Greenspan also admitted that federal deficits reduce NNS and of course he along with Bush allowed federal deficit spending to hit record levels in the first four years of the administration and are now projecting deficits as far as the eye can see. Thus borrowing trillions of dollars to privatize social security will do nothing to increase NNS. Greenspan's plan has created this Catch-22 while allowing the Bush administration to create major dislocations in the economy that will take decades to adjust. The administrations plans are quite clear, it requires genocide of all persons 65 or older.

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February 17, 2005
Greenspan Backs Idea of Accounts for Retirement
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS and RICHARD W. STEVENSON

WASHINGTON, Feb. 16 - Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman, gave his blessing on Wednesday to the creation of individual investment accounts in Social Security but expressed unease that the change could lead to trillions of dollars in additional government borrowing in the next few decades.

Mr. Greenspan's cautiously hedged support for the core of President Bush's plan to overhaul the retirement system came as Mr. Bush, in newspaper interviews published Wednesday, left the door open to raising taxes on upper-income people to help deal with Social Security's projected financial problems.

In what appeared to be an effort to show Democrats that he is serious about bipartisan compromise, Mr. Bush, responding to questions from a group of regional newspaper reporters, did not rule out raising or eliminating the cap on earnings that are subject to the payroll tax that pays for Social Security benefits.

The tax is currently levied on wages up to $90,000. Until now, Mr. Bush has said he is against raising "payroll taxes" but has been vague about whether he was talking about the earnings cap as well as the payroll tax rate of 12.4 percent, which is split equally between workers and their employers.

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<link> http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/17/business/17fed.html?th

forward unless you RAISE TAXES

... bringing the minimum wage to a rate comparable to inflation, or living wage laws, or adjusting the tax code to put more money in the pockets of lower- and middle-income families.

With consumer debt drastically higher now than it was two decades ago (debt is increasing at a much higher rate than population increase), it should be apparent that debt is fueling consumer spending. If people don't have enough money to pay off debt, they don't have money to save by traditional means.

And, what isn't being said, especially by Greenspin, is that investing SS funds in the market isn't saving, it's gambling on the future.

...income to savings graph that showed that the only group of people in our society who are realizing any savings are the people who have been given the greatest tax breaks. Everyone else lives off debts or consume more capital savings than they create. The rising economic tide seems to take only those on the ship of privilege to higher levels while drowning the vast majority of working Americans in a sea of debt.

It will have the opposite effect if anything.
People who are not wise investors will loose their entire retirement savings on some corporate scam like Enron.
These rich fat bastards just don't get it! Investing is not for every American.
There are too many people that just don't comprehend the investment world. It is a complex system of rules and regulations that can trap the most savvy of investors and they expect the guy who lives from pay check to pay check to understand these rules and make money?
Social Security was created to protect people who were not able to save for retirement.
There are many reasons why people can't manage to put money away for retirement, from lack of investment savvy to misfortunes, it just happens to people and these assholes just don't care.

This guy got to where he is by playing the political game, not by being an economic or financial genius. My dog knows more economic theory than Greenspan.
The Professor

Make IRAs fully deductible for everybody and raise interest rates so folks can make a little money on CDs. While the current low interest rates are great for borrowers, they hurt people who are savers. And before anyone flames me, we had a great economy under Clinton with higher rates, so it can be done.

which i kind of agree with.

That's the poison pill that Bush* will never swallow, so Greenspan is, in essence, torpeoding Bush's plan.