What happens to "Personalized Soc. Sec. Accounts" if stocks crash?

[Sandpiper]

Yet another elephant in the living room for Social Security Privatization is, what happens in the event of a stock market crash.

What if the nest egg you built through investing your payroll taxes suddenly loses 70% of its value?

I've yet to hear a contingency plan.

But somehow, I doubt the privatization crowd wants one.

If you lose your retirement, it's back to work for you grandma.

[stray cat]

1. Grandma probably won't be able to find a job.

Bush message - "if the stocks crash and you are retired hurry up and die" He is a heartless bastard.

[Sandpiper]

5. Nonsense

Wal Mart is always looking for new greeters.

[Worst Username Ever]

6. And don't forget Ebay!

[tsuki]

7. Lemonade stands.

[AG78]

2. Because

"I've yet to hear a contingency plan"

there isn't one.

[Aristus]

3. What are you? Against the Free and Open Market????

Some kinda COMMIE?!?!?!?!?


:silly:

[Blue Diadem]

29. OMG have you been

talking to my brother?? He used that same phrase on me about an hour ago...'cept he wasn't kidding like you are.

[Aristus]

33. THE STOCK MARKET HAS NEVER CRASHED!

NEVER, NEVER, NEVER!

Anyone who says so is a commie, or a terrorist, or French, or a U.N. plant, or...or...what a sec, I'll think of someone.........

Oct. 29, 1929? That was an 'adjustment'.

Oct 27, 1987? That was a 'readjustment'.

Quit tryin' ta SCARE people!















That's the Repukes' job!!!! :silly::crazy::dunce:

[Blue Diadem]

37. I swear you were listening to my phone conversation

I kept asking him what happened in '29 and '87. He spit and sputtered and then began calling me a commie..

[Worst Username Ever]

4. You probably don't HAVE to invest in stocks

And only a small portion of your contribution goes into the private account.. say if your SS tax is 6%, maybe 4% goes into the regular account (so you'll still get SOMETHING) and 2% goes into the private account. IF you invest in stocks, and it crashes, you will just have to ride it out like you would in an IRA. If you invest in t-bills, which I am sure would be an option, then not much would change.

I think very few americans know enough about this stuff to make privatization a good thing, so I am against it, but if it did somehow get through, that is how it would likely work. The transitional costs are HORRID.

[sallyseven]

10. except if you die at age 40 your wife would have

less income for the kids. If you get sick and try for SSA-DIS your shit out of luck. That will be a pittance. Leave the thing alone. Allow people to put away money tax deferred in an account that can be only used for retirement. Keep the brokers out of it. bush knows that you cannot fight the brokers and he doesn't give a rats behind.

[DebJ]

18. if you invest in tbills, you're better off leaving it in SSI...because

SSI's costs are .5%, versus the broker fees that would be paid in a pirate account to buy the same damn security we already have

[DebJ]

19. also that small portion of 2% drains 1/3 of funds into SSI

[EVDebs]

8. Free Market Theology... genuflect NOW ! Thomas Frank's book

One Market Under God and a Christian Science Monitor article "The myth of the populist stock market"

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0108/p09s01-coop.html

"...major retirement pension plans lost $1 trillion from the beginning of 2000 through beginning of 2003."


go a long way to debunking the true Republican god "Mammon" ! The little investor gets screwed just like the little taxpayer gets screwed in the Republican's bizarre parallel univese. It just keeps on getting zanier with this administration every day.

[oneighty]

9. If Privateers

had the courage of their convictions THEY would invest all of SS funds in the stock market and guarantee the returns or cover the loss as in FDIC.

To hear them tell it SS funds invested in the stock market ought to produce enough profit to finance the federal government with plenty left over for the retirees.

180

[Ironpost]

11. They tank, nothing more, nothing less

[central scrutinizer]

12. that's only part of the problem

a large percentage of people on social security are disabled or surviving family members. I know this personally. I was six years old and my sister was two when our father died of a heart attack in his 30's. Without the monthly social security checks we received as his dependents, we would have been homeless and hungry within a few months. Even if he had a "personal" account, after only ten years of deposits, it would have been rapidly depleted. And when your personal account is gone, there is no safety net. Better start looking for a bridge to live under. Compound interest is great if you never get sick or disabled, the stock market never tanks, one of the breadwinners doesn't die, etc.

[Just Me]

13. The most wealthy snooze,...the rest of us lose. eom

[librechik]

14. that would never happen, because stocks just go up and up!

(heard this from a C-Span caller the other day) Was the stock market higher in 1960 than it was in 1950 (yes) Was the stock market higher in 1980 than in 1970 (yes) etc. What if you had invested in "the stock market" back in 1950? You'd be wealthy now, right?

no, because of a) inflation, and b)just because the stock market average rises year after year doesn't mean YOUR investment will--look at Enron!

[yankeedem]

31. Was the stock market higher in 1954 than it was in 1929?

D'oh!

Was the stock market higher in 2005 than it was in 2000?

D'oh!

[Liberty Belle]

15. Walmart always needs greeters.

[Old and In the Way]

16. You are, personally speaking, SOL.

[Les BOOGIE]

17. S.O.S.

same thing that happened to the Texas Surplus & the USA Surplus

[DefenseLawyer]

20. I always laugh when free marketeers talk

about how well stocks do over "the long run" and how it is a great long term investment etc, so naturally we should prefer private investment over social security. Which is true of course (the part about the average long term return from stocks), but I remind them that if the market crashes on the day you retire it is tough to buy food with worthless stock that will perhaps bounce back in 5 years or so.

[Cleita]

21. Same thing that happens in private when the stock market

crashes. You lose everything if you didn't sell before the crash.

[KansDem]

32. "Before the crash..."

Unlike Bush, many of us do not have access to insider information, so we will lose when a stock crashes...

Consider Bush and his Harken stock sale just before the company tanked. He had insider information that the stock was just about to dip and sold fast before that information became public.

"When President Bush sold more than 200,000 shares in Harken Energy Corp. in June 1990, he said he did not know the company was in bad financial shape. But memos from the company show in great detail that he was apprised of how badly the company's fortunes were failing before he sold his stock -- and that he was warned by company lawyers against selling stock based on insider information."
http://www.buzzflash.com/perspectives/bush_harken.html

[Cleita]

35. I know the whole market buy and sell scam is as

crooked as they come, yet it seems that only Democrats like Martha Stewart go to jail for it.

[KansDem]

38. Bush ought to announce that any American who wants to opt in...

for privatized SS accounts will have access to insider information to all the country's corporations. That would level the "playing field."

But then, that would also eliminate the "insiders"

[amazona]

22. there will be no jobs when the money is taken through a crash

If you lose your job and you're over 50, you're already fighting an uphill battle. The 70 year old hordes are dreaming if their back-up plan is to work in retirement. People will be giving kickbacks to the hiring guy to get those "greeters" jobs at Wally World.

The contingency plan is for the old people to die and get out of the way. That's really it, pure and simple.

I'm tired of pussyfooting around the issue. We are face to face with true evil here. They are not taking our money and giving it to the financial services industry because they care what happens to us once the money is secured in the Caymans.

The conservation movement is a breeding ground of communists
and other subversives. We intend to clean them out,
even if it means rounding up every birdwatcher in the country.
--John Mitchell, US Attorney General 1969-72

[peacetalksforall]

23. The cabal's vocabulary doesn't include the words 'contingency plan'.

Look at Iraq.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

24. Well, just to set the mood... we could number these accounts in

enronological order.... so we wouln't be too surprised when it does drop like a rock.

[slater71]

25. And what about.......

The maintaince fees for these accounts. How much will they be?

[MsConduct]

26. That's the first question I asked anyone who would listen when

I first heard of the dub's brilliant plan. It's win-win for the great 1%. If they can't get all the money one way, they'll get it another. We are F-ed, no doubt about it.

[annabanana]

27. Granny and Gramps get the room under the stairs

for the rest of their lives. (Oops! there goes the "den/sewing/rec/guest room)

[AP]

28. Here's the beauty of that for big business: when do stock markets crash?

When the economy is bad.

And when does a business want, I mean, need the cheapest labor possible? When the economy is bad.

So, if the stock market crashes, a lot of old people can't retire. Other old people will be looking for jobs bagging groceries or hawking newspaper subscriptions.

It'll create a buyer's market for labor at exactly the moment employers need cheap labor.

Who cares about the misery it will create for people.

[Eric J in MN]

30. Cat food for people. (nt)

nt

[Generator]

34. Back in the USSR you don't know how lucky you are

Actually that's after Communism. Same dif. Screwed with Commies, screwed with the free market. At least they can bitch about it now though hey?

I remember pictures/reading about the old people in the new Russia selling vegetables and without a garden they would have starved. Imagine overnight your money worth nothing. But the rich never suffer. Never ever. Cause they have enuf to diversify.

Bush's goal is to turn this into as close a third world place as possible. If the poor get poorer, who cares?

[WLKjr]

36. Funny I ask the same questions to all my righty friends

when they say ss is too much of an entitlement program and they should be allowed to invest that money.


They don't understand as I do that privatizing relies soley on how the stock market preforms, if it tanks, your done, if it does good, then alright good for you. But I don't like gambling away a sure thing.

[Retrograde]

39. who cares? the brokerages will still get their cuts (n/t)