Here's exactly why Repugs want to hand SocSec to Wall St

[boutons_deux]

"Don't let them privatise Social Security.

I am an Australian and we have a compulsory privatized social security program here called 'superannuation' which is proving a complete disaster. Huge management fees get ripped out of our savings each year by the private 'wealth management' companies that run the schemes. Also, the bulk of the funds get invested in the stock market which has resulted in almost everyone in the country losing money in their retirement savings for the last few years - which in turn has resulted in most people having to delay their planned retirement. Oh - and the 'management fees' still get ripped out each year - no matter how badly the investments perform.

So let the Australian experience be a warning to you."

http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/opinion/16krugman.html

That's exactly how hedge/private equity funds work. No matter how badly the fund performs, the fund mgmt takes their fees, on which they pay only 15% income tax, as if their fees were capital gains.

[Marcus Bryant]

And if it's posted on the internets it must be true, for anyone can do so, therefore you are receiving the best possible information.

[ducks]

"Don't let them privatise Social Security.

I am an Australian and we have a compulsory privatized social security program here called 'superannuation' which is proving a complete disaster. Huge management fees get ripped out of our savings each year by the private 'wealth management' companies that run the schemes. Also, the bulk of the funds get invested in the stock market which has resulted in almost everyone in the country losing money in their retirement savings for the last few years - which in turn has resulted in most people having to delay their planned retirement. Oh - and the 'management fees' still get ripped out each year - no matter how badly the investments perform.

So let the Australian experience be a warning to you."

http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/opinion/16krugman.html

That's exactly how hedge/private equity funds work. No matter how badly the fund performs, the fund mgmt takes their fees, on which they pay only 15% income tax, as if their fees were capital gains.

yes the gov is doing such a good job taking care of social security and is in debt deeper then the ocean. the gov should not be respsopnsible for your retirement. but keep thinking that way boutons because that makes you look like a idiot

[Parker2112]

And if it's posted on the internets it must be true, for anyone can do so, therefore you are receiving the best possible information.

why would we not assume that the bloody scent of forced privatization wouldn't bring the sharks out from the deep?

[Winehole23]

To be completely clear, the forced privatization you speak of is legislation that would "force" our compulsory contributions to social insurance, back into our own pockets. There is little doubt there will be some tangible benefit to the class of rentiers created by the law to manage private retirement accounts, should one ever be passed.

BTW, how did that go the last time around, Parker2112?

Seems to me seniors were the shark, GWB was the swimmer and it was his own political blood in the water. What's changed since then?

[boutons_deux]

The reason all industrial economies have mandatory retirement/unemployment schemes is that they know most people won't save, and won't save enough. So these non-savers get to the end of their earning period, and would fall into total poverty and end up on humanitarian govt dole anyway, without having paid in to the govt in the first place.

MB, there is no doubt that donating SocSec funds to Wall St, would lose 100 of $Bs to Wall St fees, etc. I don't need Internet to tell me that's true. We already heard how Wall St rips off "dumb" investors like private and public pension funds.

"oops. our investment fund lost $10B, sorry. We'll take $200M in fund mgmt fees, thank you very much. We'll try to do better"

"seniors were the shark, GWB was the swimmer"

no, dubya was the dumb turkey, and walked right into the seniors' firefight.

[Winehole23]

dubya wasn't dumb, but taking on SS was like pissing into a hurricane. It probably still would be.

[EmptyMan]

That's odd. Fees get ripped out of my paycheck by "managers" every time as well here in America.



Boutons, you are right but the current forced application blows as well. Like you said, no one wants to make any sacrifices and save their own gd money for a 40 year period of never touching it.

[coyotes_geek]

That's exactly how hedge/private equity funds work. No matter how badly the fund performs, the fund mgmt takes their fees, on which they pay only 15% income tax, as if their fees were capital gains.

Kinda sounds like our government. No matter how badly the government handles our money, they get to keep running up debt on our taxpayer credit card.

[boutons_deux]

CG, get your shit straight.

http://www.cbpp.org/images/cms//12-16-09bud-rev6-28-10-f1.jpg

Nearly all of the current and future deficit is Repug misgovernance, not "govt" in general.

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3036

[coyotes_geek]

i like how your chart predicts that obama and the democrats aren't going to do much of anything about the bush tax cuts, iraq/afghanistan, or the economic downturn. i guess there's enough misgovernance to go around.

[boutons_deux]

VERY hard to turn the Good Ship of Repug Shit around.

What's great about the dubya tax cuts is that not doing anything means the tax cuts end ACCORDING TO THE REPUGS' TAX PLAN.

What you should really like how the Repugs handed down megatons of shit to Dems and now trash the Dems for causing the Repug shit

[coyotes_geek]

VERY hard to turn the Good Ship of Repug Shit around.

According to your chart the democrats aren't even trying. They've taken the helm and given the order for full speed ahead.


What's great about the dubya tax cuts is that not doing anything means the tax cuts end ACCORDING TO THE REPUGS' TAX PLAN.

So either your chart is bullshit because the Bush tax cuts go away after 2010, or the Bush tax cuts become the Obama tax cuts because Obama and the democrats will have deliberately acted to continue them. Which is it?


What you should really like how the Repugs handed down megatons of shit to Dems and now trash the Dems for causing the Repug shit

Actually what I like is how I hold both parties equally responsible for the shit we're in.

[Wild Cobra]

CG, get your shit straight.

http://www.cbpp.org/images/cms//12-16-09bud-rev6-28-10-f1.jpg

Nearly all of the current and future deficit is Repug misgovernance, not "govt" in general.

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3036
That chart is bullshit. Made in some libtards wetdream.

[Mikesatx]

Another ignorant liberal post. Try researching before throwing out this garbage. Take a look at what you are paying into social security assuming you aren't sucking the government tit and then look at your 401k assuming you have a job. Your 401k and/or IRA allow options that include money managers but also include either stable value portfolios in the 401k or CD's in the IRA. Neither carry fees. If you want market participation you can self manage and pick your own stocks in an IRA or use ETF's which cost as low as .14% per year. You want to make your post meaningful calculate the rate of return generated by SSI. Here's a hint. Take your annual SSI statement that provides the benefit at retirement. That is your future value calc. the money you have payed in is your series of cash flows. Retirement age on the statement minus your age is the number of years. That data will generate a rate of return. The solution is your a dumb ass.

[Winehole23]

^^^Not out of sequence it would seem.

[Winehole23]

...

[Winehole23]

...

[coyotes_geek]

Another ignorant liberal post. Try researching before throwing out this garbage. Take a look at what you are paying into social security assuming you aren't sucking the government tit and then look at your 401k assuming you have a job. Your 401k and/or IRA allow options that include money managers but also include either stable value portfolios in the 401k or CD's in the IRA. Neither carry fees. If you want market participation you can self manage and pick your own stocks in an IRA or use ETF's which cost as low as .14% per year. You want to make your post meaningful calculate the rate of return generated by SSI. Here's a hint. Take your annual SSI statement that provides the benefit at retirement. That is your future value calc. the money you have payed in is your series of cash flows. Retirement age on the statement minus your age is the number of years. That data will generate a rate of return. The solution is your a dumb ass.

Great post. :tu

For most people, that rate of return on their social security "investment" is 1.5% or lower. And that's without taking into account any future benefit cuts or payroll tax increases which are inevitable. Even if you're completely petrified over the concept of the stock market you could still put your SS money in treasury bonds and absolutely blow away the returns the current ponzi scheme system will produce for you. Even with interest rates at historic lows 30yr treasuries are still fetching rates in the high 3's%.

[boutons_deux]

For most private savings funds, they lost %30 in the Banksters' Great Depression. What the ROI there?

[coyotes_geek]

20yr return on the S&P 500 is still around 6% even after all the crap that's happened over the last 2 years. Still far and above the ponzi scheme ROR.

[boutons_deux]

The long term appreciation is meaningless if your pension account is down 30%, or 10%, on the date you would have liked to retire.

[ducks]

it is the repubilcans fault though your pension is down because you made the wrong choice in which to invest right boutons

[Mikesatx]

I'm impressed with your knowledge of what people lost during the Great Depression. Did you ask them? The Great Depression also produced the FDIC. If the alternative to SSI is an IRA style account you can place your money in FDIC insured CD's up to 250k today. Eventually that will drop back to 100k. If you have more money than that you can open multiple IRA's to cover all of it. coyotes_geek mentioned treasury bonds on the investment side. Both a FDIC insured deposit and a treasury bond are guaranteed by our government. The guarantee is good as long as the US stays solvent. If that doesn't happen SSI is gone too.

The reality is you would be a fool to use either of the above options but in both cases they will grow your money quicker than SSI and provide you your guarantee.

Your statement on Pensions is wrong as well. Pensions don't lose value. The companies that used them years ago were required to fund to meet the set benefit. 401k's came along to give individual investors the option to take more risk if they chose. These are the accounts that fluctuate. By the way 401k's didn't exist during the Great Depression.

[EmptyMan]

lol boutons

I'd rather be in my 60's w/ 2+ mil in a roth when the market gives you 10% that year. Compound interest is glorious.

[Capt Bringdown]

dubya wasn't dumb, but taking on SS was like pissing into a hurricane. It probably still would be.

Or perhaps not. It seems Obummer's been sent from the main office to accomplish things that the Repug's only dreamed about.

No doubt his catfood commission will come out with some necessary "adjustments" to Social Security. In other words, anything and everything is on the table except raising taxes on the rich.

[Winehole23]

Or perhaps not. It seems Obummer's been sent from the main office to accomplish things that the Repug's only dreamed about.

No doubt his catfood commission will come out with some necessary "adjustments" to Social Security. In other words, anything and everything is on the table except raising taxes on the rich. What makes you think that isn't on the table, too? Just curious.

[Mikesatx]

Federal Taxes are progressive. The more you make the more you pay. SSI is not progressive you pay a set percentage of 7.65% unless you are self-employed and then you also pay the other half for a total of 15.3%. The wage base goes up to $106,800 this year so every dollar above that level is not subject to the 7.65% or 15.3%.

Since when does Obama cater to the rich? The Bush tax cuts are expiring in a couple of months which will push tax rates up for everyone. The estate tax exemption will go down to 1 mil. as well on Jan 1. When that happens a married couple will be able to exempt 2 mil at their death. The rest will be taxed at 55% unless it is given to charity.

The fix for SSI will either be to push full retirement age out which has already been done or eliminate the wage base which will put more burden on the wealthy.

Just curious how what percentage do you think someone who makes 30k a year pay in taxes? How about 100k? What about a million?

Bitching about the rich is funny considering they are already shouldering the load. Maybe you should just tell them Thank You.

[Wild Cobra]

Just curious how what percentage do you think someone who makes 30k a year pay in taxes? How about 100k? What about a million?

A minimum of 10%, at any income. I say no matter what write-offs a person has, they still pay a minimum 10%.

Untill all voters who work are subject to a fair tax rate, the 50%+ that make under a certain income have no problem raising taxes, because they don't feel it. I demand equal suffrage.

[DMX7]

People who live in poverty have also had it easy for too long!

[Wild Cobra]

People who live in poverty have also had it easy for too long!
I feel for most of them. Still, it gives them no right to vote to raise peoples taxes when it doesn't affect them. My alternative is to say that if you are not a net tax payer, then you have no right to vote.

[boutons_deux]

Small Investors Vote Massively to Hand Social Security to Wall St :lol



August 21, 2010

In Striking Shift, Small Investors Flee Stock Market

By GRAHAM BOWLEY

Renewed economic uncertainty is testing Americans’ generation-long love affair with the stock market.

Investors withdrew a staggering $33.12 billion from domestic stock market mutual funds in the first seven months of this year, according to the Investment Company Institute, the mutual fund industry trade group. Now many are choosing investments they deem safer, like bonds.

If that pace continues, more money will be pulled out of these mutual funds in 2010 than in any year since the 1980s, with the exception of 2008, when the global financial crisis peaked.

Small investors are “losing their appetite for risk,” a Credit Suisse analyst, Doug Cliggott, said in a report to investors on Friday.

One of the phenomena of the last several decades has been the rise of the individual investor. As Americans have become more responsible for their own retirement, they have poured money into stocks with such faith that half of the country’s households now own shares directly or through mutual funds, which are by far the most popular way Americans invest in stocks. So the turnabout is striking.

So is the timing. After past recessions, ordinary investors have typically regained their enthusiasm for stocks, hoping to profit as the economy recovered. This time, even as corporate earnings have improved, Americans have become more guarded with their investments.

“At this stage in the economic cycle, $10 to $20 billion would normally be flowing into domestic equity funds” rather than the billions that are flowing out, said Brian K. Reid, chief economist of the investment institute. He added, “This is very unusual.”

The notion that stocks tend to be safe and profitable investments over time seems to have been dented in much the same way that a decline in home values and in job stability the last few years has altered Americans’ sense of financial security.

It may take many years before it is clear whether this becomes a long-term shift in psychology. After technology and dot-com shares crashed in the early 2000s, for example, investors were quick to re-enter the stock market. Yet bigger economic calamities like the Great Depression affected people’s attitudes toward money for decades.

For now, though, mixed economic data is presenting a picture of an economy that is recovering feebly from recession.

“For a lot of ordinary people, the economic recovery does not feel real,” said Loren Fox, a senior analyst at Strategic Insight, a New York research and data firm. “People are not going to rush toward the stock market on a sustained basis until they feel more confident of employment growth and the sustainability of the economic recovery.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/business/22invest.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnlx=1282518020-3Hva7KRRTNtlDxkmy596HA&pagewanted=print

==============

The Repugs are closely attuned to Average Joe

Most Americans want out of the wars, Repugs want to keep wasting lives and treasure (although That Old Lesbian Lindsay Graham has flipped in favor of waritus interruptus)

Repugs want to privatize Soc Sec, kill Medicare/Medicaid, and repeal health reform bill, while Soc Sec, Medicare, Medicaid are not only popular but life-lines for recipients.

Now, if the Repugs would just run anti-Midas pitbull bitch in 2012, the Dems would be all set for another 6 years. :lol

[Mikesatx]

Small Investors Vote Massively to Hand Social Security to Wall St :lol



August 21, 2010

In Striking Shift, Small Investors Flee Stock Market

By GRAHAM BOWLEY

Renewed economic uncertainty is testing Americans’ generation-long love affair with the stock market.

Investors withdrew a staggering $33.12 billion from domestic stock market mutual funds in the first seven months of this year, according to the Investment Company Institute, the mutual fund industry trade group. Now many are choosing investments they deem safer, like bonds.

If that pace continues, more money will be pulled out of these mutual funds in 2010 than in any year since the 1980s, with the exception of 2008, when the global financial crisis peaked.

Small investors are “losing their appetite for risk,” a Credit Suisse analyst, Doug Cliggott, said in a report to investors on Friday.

One of the phenomena of the last several decades has been the rise of the individual investor. As Americans have become more responsible for their own retirement, they have poured money into stocks with such faith that half of the country’s households now own shares directly or through mutual funds, which are by far the most popular way Americans invest in stocks. So the turnabout is striking.

So is the timing. After past recessions, ordinary investors have typically regained their enthusiasm for stocks, hoping to profit as the economy recovered. This time, even as corporate earnings have improved, Americans have become more guarded with their investments.

“At this stage in the economic cycle, $10 to $20 billion would normally be flowing into domestic equity funds” rather than the billions that are flowing out, said Brian K. Reid, chief economist of the investment institute. He added, “This is very unusual.”

The notion that stocks tend to be safe and profitable investments over time seems to have been dented in much the same way that a decline in home values and in job stability the last few years has altered Americans’ sense of financial security.

It may take many years before it is clear whether this becomes a long-term shift in psychology. After technology and dot-com shares crashed in the early 2000s, for example, investors were quick to re-enter the stock market. Yet bigger economic calamities like the Great Depression affected people’s attitudes toward money for decades.

For now, though, mixed economic data is presenting a picture of an economy that is recovering feebly from recession.

“For a lot of ordinary people, the economic recovery does not feel real,” said Loren Fox, a senior analyst at Strategic Insight, a New York research and data firm. “People are not going to rush toward the stock market on a sustained basis until they feel more confident of employment growth and the sustainability of the economic recovery.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/business/22invest.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnlx=1282518020-3Hva7KRRTNtlDxkmy596HA&pagewanted=print

==============

The Repugs are closely attuned to Average Joe

Most Americans want out of the wars, Repugs want to keep wasting lives and treasure (although That Old Lesbian Lindsay Graham has flipped in favor of waritus interruptus)

Repugs want to privatize Soc Sec, kill Medicare/Medicaid, and repeal health reform bill, while Soc Sec, Medicare, Medicaid are not only popular but life-lines for recipients.

Now, if the Repugs would just run anti-Midas pitbull bitch in 2012, the Dems would be all set for another 6 years. :lol

Since when do small investors make the right investment decisions. These are the same folks flocking to bonds who will get comfortable sit tight and when rates eventually rise (there is no other direction to go) will get crushed again. Pay attention to where the smart money is going and remember Buffet's quote "be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy".

[boutons_deux]

"Since when do small investors make the right investment decisions"

You're absolutely right. If it weren't for small investors losing their money in the rigged casino (like losing 30% of their 401's, etc.) and getting fee'd to death by the croupiers, Wall St would would be worse off.

[Mikesatx]

If you were in the market in '08 you lost unless you bet against the market. Most don't short the market. Small investors lose because they sell their stocks when the market is down and move to bonds or cash. Then when the economy is stronger and they are more comfortable they go back to stocks. At this point the market recovered most if not all of what it lost but not the small investor because they were only in it for the ride down.

Your keep talking about evil Wall Street and their dastardly fees. What is the appropriate amount to charge? Do you know about discount vs. full service brokerage firms? Are you familiar with no-load funds vs. loaded funds? How about Exchange Traded Funds?