Robert Rubin on Bush Soc Sec "It's a badly, badly flawed plan,"

[papau]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1394301,00.html

Excerpt:
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"It's a badly, badly flawed plan," Robert Rubin, the former
secretary of the treasury and current Citigroup director, told
me. "From a fiscal point of view it's horrendous. It adds to
deficits and federal debt in very large numbers until 2060." He
calculates that the transition costs of Bush's plan for the first 10
years will be at least $2 trillion, and $4.5 trillion for the second
10 years. The exploding deficit would have an "adverse effect on
interest rates, an adverse effect on consumption and housing prices,
reduce productivity and growth, and crowd out debt capital to the
private sector. Markets could begin to lose confidence in fiscal
policy. The soundness of social security will be worse".

Rubin adds that the stock market is hardly a sure bet. "You are not
making social security more secure by subjecting people's retirement
to equity risk. If you look at the Nikkei in Japan you get a sense
of what can happen."

[BlueEyedSon]

1. Robert Rubin is a true genius, and despite his position has not sold out.

[papau]

2. I'd like to have him back as Treas Sec so the economy could go forward

:-)