Out of the Mouth's of Babes

Alan Greenspan and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton clashed briefly Tuesday over rosy surplus forecasts the Federal Reserve Chairman relied on to support President President Bush's 2001 tax cuts, estimates that turned out to be considerably off the mark.


"It turns out that we were all wrong," Greenspan conceded at a Senate hearing.


"Just for the record, we were not all wrong, but many people were wrong," Clinton, D-N.Y., quickly shot back.[ SFGATE.com ]

Yep, the Hillster is the babe in this story! Kudo's Hillary for finally having to balls to speak up.

Speaking of speaking up. Here's what Greenspan had to say about Social Security.

"Greenspan also suggested resurrecting the notion of sealing off Social Security revenues from other uses. Last year Social Security tax revenues plus interest exceeded benefits by about $150 billion, he said." (doesn't sound like a program in crisis to me, which incidently is what Greenspan has been saying all along)

On the President's plan for private accounts Greenspan stated" "The accounts by themselves won't fix the solvency of the retirement program, but they raise the specter of increasing savings, which is extremely low."
WHAT? You say? Then why all this brouhaha about private accounts? Well because that would "... raise the specter of increasing savings, which is extremely low" thereby putting more money into the hands of banks and investors (you know, Bush's core group of supporters, the wealthy ). Money they can't get at as long as it's locked up in the SS fund, as Greenspan is strongly suggesting in his remarks above.

In fact private accounts will only succeed in pulling funds away from the SS fund, which will then create a serious problem.

Anyone who doesn't believe that Bush is pushing this for the benifit of those in the banking industry and on Wall Street, is in deep denial. Even his own Federal Reserve Chairman is as much as saying so.
"We need, in effect, to make the phantom `lock-boxes' around the trust fund real," he (Greenspan) said.

I'd say he is exactly right . Lock it away from Bush & Co.
posted by wanda at 3:04 PM