FROM THE NEW FED CHIEF
On Thursday, January 18, Ben Bernanke made a prepared statement to the Senate Budget Committee in which he claimed the following:
It’s also important to note that in his State of the Union address President Bush claimed to have already cut the budget deficit in half three years ahead of his 2009 deadline.
Obviously, there are two different sets of books in federal accounting, one that Mr. Bernanke calls the “unified budget deficit” that was $248 billion in fiscal 2006 and another that he called the “on-budget deficit” that was $434 billion in the same year and which we hear little about.
Isn’t this the sort of fraud that Enron pulled? Wasn’t it what got Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling in deep doo-doo and cost American investors millions? Isn’t it a crime and the sort of thing the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Justice Department should be jumping all over? How does our own federal government get away with it? Are they above the law?
You might also recall the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, telling the same Senate Budget Committee that the government should commit itself to “accrual accounting” because it would be more straightforward.
Not only are the Senate and House Budget Committees aware of this, but also the Finance, Ways & Means, Tax, and other committees and subcommittees that our elected representatives either belong to or should be informed about. This double bookkeeping that is an integral part of the Pay-It-Again Sam scam may be the only really nonpartisan activity in
The democrats are still bragging about how, in fiscal 2000, they balanced the budget and produced a $237 billion surplus. They have not, however, admitted that $87 billion of this surplus came from personal and corporate income tax overcharges that Bush cut, at least in part. They want that money back.
More importantly, the democrats will never admit that $149.9 billion, the bulk of the 2000 surplus, came from entitlements with Social Security leading the pack at a $94.5 billion clip (pun intended).
The democrats took most of this 2000 surplus ($230 billion of it) and threw it against the national debt in a halfhearted attempt to reduce an obligation that would, according to any mortgage model, require at least a $300 billion annual payment at 5 percent interest to even dent it. In fiscal 2000, the national debt went up $18 billion anyway.
This is what the democrat "party of the people" is so proud of. A surplus that, in large part, consisted of robbing dedicated retirement funds from every paycheck of every working stiff in America.
In 2001, then Press Secretary Ari Fleischer several times referred to the $237 billion surplus from the preceding year as showing in the “unified budget.” The unified budget is simply the combination or unifying of "on budget" and "off budget" items in one package. And "accrual" accounting is a polite way to say "be honest" and include everything.
Please reread the first sentence and the highlighted portion of Mr. Bernanke’s statement above. Does it make sense to you? How can the method “excluding” Social Security be the largest?
This cannot be a typo. A prepared statement must have been edited and proofed for content and sense, especially by Mr. Bernanke himself. (Read the full statement)
And if you feel confused, take a look at what their own Government Accounting (now Accountability) Office (GAO) has to say on a similar subject:
How's that for a disclaimer?
Personally, I think the newly appointed Chairman of the independent Federal Reserve was a bit shaken by his recent trip to the Orient after both
Witness this snippet from a New York Times January 25th article on future deficits:
I’m not the only one who thinks the trip to
With a dollar falling in value, can you blame China and Japan for deciding to invest elsewhere? And with treasuries "cashable" at any time, they each have the power to bring us economically to our knees anytime they tire of our worldwide aggression or, in China's case, our threats toward Iran, one of their sources of oil.
What’s more, our major creditor’s choice to invest elsewhere is already showing up in the U.S. Treasury’s attempts to borrow legitimately. Witness the results of securities “accepted” when we recently tried to sell popular two year treasuries.
The question now is whether the pension houses and individual investors who show little or no compunction about throwing their fellow Americans and neighbors deeper in debt will continue to support George W. Bush's quest for world domination or whether they will stop investing in the only tool the Administration has to raise money without congressional approval and control.
Sixty-four billion in securities "tendered" (put up for sale). Twenty-three billion "accepted" (purchased). Is it any wonder that a government desperate for more money is now looking for alternative sources of cash and using every tool they can lay their hands on?
The Boomers Are Coming – The Boomers Are Coming
One year before the first “boomers” are eligible for early retirement and it will gradually become obvious to everyone that this was one of the biggest fear stories ever invented, it’s time for one last “surge” of the myth. Loyal soldiers like Mr. Bernanke and our new Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, will milk this fable for all it’s worth on a preposterous mission to garner even more booty from an insurance system that’s producing profits by the barrel full.
If this were real money instead of debt markers of value only to the pirates, we would all be sitting pretty and Social Security would last forever. Instead, it's a major portion of the national debt. A debt and future tax that can only be redeemed by the taxpaying public. A swindle brought to you by Uncle Scam.
And now, we're supposed to swallow the fantastic story that "76 million" (the number increases somehow) boomers all survived to retirement age and are about to wreck havoc on the cash cow, Social Security. When the truth is that there would have been a 69 million normal increase to the population between 1946 and 1965 if there had never been a World War II. How gullible do they think we are?
On the other hand, we should welcome the greed that moves Social Security to the front burner once again. It’s the only chance we have to expose the $3.6 trillion total fraud that Mr. Bernanke left out of his “37 percent of GDP for one year” (honest borrowing). The more than $2 trillion in stealing from our supplemental retirement insurance is only one large part of the missing balance that brings the entire debt to 76% of GDP for one year. If it doesn’t become an issue covered by the media it will simply continue quietly as is and with the Beltway Bandits continuing to walk off with fourteen percent (14.1%) of our retirement premiums.
Go to it gentlemen. Let it all hang out.