Tick-Tock Bigger Rocks-$ocial $ecurity and Medicare-US Debt-IOU’s-Nxt Bailout?
We continue to have focus on our enormous deficits, bank and financial bailouts, and the Steam Pressed Dash for Health Care Reform when these two true elephants not only loom in the background, they are about to do a herd stampede faster then statistics expected. Social Security often described as our greatest Ponzi Scheme ever, has statistical changes which are beating the clock in the midst of our ongoing crisis, and Medicare is no better. Both are an implosion waiting to happen with tremendous pressure on our future financials. There is absolutely no way to continue with ignorance on this issue, due to the massive amount of Americans which are affected. Estimates in record keeping, are just that “estimates”, never written in stone and are supposed to be adjusted as necessary. While most are aware, there has been a lot of “magic” in these lockboxes throughout the years gone bye bye, and they have financed the rest of our government with simple transfers of IOU’s……. We now have had a dramatic change in Federal and State tax collections to generate revenue (a decline of 34% in tax receipts for 2009), and a severe rise in unemployment, not to mention the “boomers” hitting retirement, and the longer life of the elderly`
Additional charts and data available
From April of 2008 for one reference: Social Security’s Cash Flow Problem from the American Institute for Economic Research
As the table below shows, Social Security’s cash flow is projected to weaken until the end of 2016, when the payroll tax will just cover costs. Beginning in 2017—over two decades before its projected exhaustion date—Social Security will start running cash deficits. These deficits are expected to increase steadily, exceeding $800 billion in 2040.
Now, as we spring forward, a little over a year later, how much has that changed? Many are stamping their feet and presenting new articles/statistics on this anomaly which spirals out of control with a chain and ball around our necks about to sink in waters like a rock! One recent article covers a lot of these points, with an abundance of charts and data to do brain-drain on Social Security and Medicare to be faced by the Obama Administration.
The Next Great Bailout: Social Security by Allan Slogan (Fortune Magazine)==>”Perhaps as early as this year, Social Security, at $680 billion the nation’s biggest social program, will be transformed from an operation that’s helped finance the rest of the government for 25 years into a cash drain that will need money from the Treasury. In other words, a bailout” . It is highly suggested the complete article be read if for naught but to view the charts!
Then, review and read the latest from Bill Fleckenstein: Social Security Crunch Coming Fast
==>Could Social Security’s number be up?
“As I’ve already noted, there is no money in the Social Security Trust Fund — just IOUs from the government to itself. What is liable to spark debate and grab headlines is that instead of producing its biggest surplus ever in 2009-10, the trust fund could start running deficits in the next year, primarily because the weak economy is generating less tax revenue. That’s years earlier than expected. Social Security wasn’t supposed to go into the red until around 2015.”
Last, you should take a listen to a wide ranging dicussion here by Bill Fleckenstein in an interview on King World News
