Harry Guerrilla
DP Veteran
- Joined
- Dec 18, 2008
- Messages
- 28,951
- Reaction score
- 12,422
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Libertarian
Social Security to start cashing Uncle Sam's IOUs - Yahoo! News
There is a lot more to read with this story.
We should have done something about this problem when we knew it was coming and we shouldn't be bothering with another program until this gets fixed.
PARKERSBURG, W.Va. – The retirement nest egg of an entire generation is stashed away in this small town along the Ohio River: $2.5 trillion in IOUs from the federal government, payable to the Social Security Administration.
It's time to start cashing them in.
Sounds like a good time to start tapping the nest egg. Too bad the federal government already spent that money over the years on other programs, preferring to borrow from Social Security rather than foreign creditors. In return, the Treasury Department issued a stack of IOUs — in the form of Treasury bonds — which are kept in a nondescript office building just down the street from Parkersburg's municipal offices.
Now the government will have to borrow even more money, much of it abroad, to start paying back the IOUs, and the timing couldn't be worse. The government is projected to post a record $1.5 trillion budget deficit this year, followed by trillion dollar deficits for years to come.
There is a lot more to read with this story.
We should have done something about this problem when we knew it was coming and we shouldn't be bothering with another program until this gets fixed.