Comptroller of the United States Warns of Pending Economic Disaster

David Walker, Comptroller General for the United States, warns US Citizens of pending Economic disaster if we do not change course. I think this is an important issue and needs to be addressed during the current and pending campaigns. This article details what will certainly happen as "baby boomers" leave the workforce and enter into retirement, and thus further strain the already overburdened Social Security, and other social programs.




It behoves us all to pay attention to the fact that the United States Government continues to borrow billions of dollars from foreign powers in order to fund everything from the War in Iraq to our own domestic policies. This practice cannot go on forever.

All this practice does is drive us into an ever deeper quagmire which effects every single American, threatening not only the general economy of the Country, but the financial security of each individual citizen.

Though it may be polictcally unsavory to any candidate for national Public Office, we need to bring these issues up to them, and demand solid plans and answers to this pending disaster. Let's see what we can come up with, Folks.

Related AboveTopSecret.com Discussion Threads:
politics.abovetopsecret.com...

[edit on 28-10-2006 by Ed Littlefox]

Not really news.. I've posted this months ago.
Anyway have a look here:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Apart from the interviews with Walker, you'll also find a radio interview on page two.

And though the federal debt has grown in dollar terms since 2001, it hasn't grown dramatically relative to the size of the economy.

But that's about to change, thanks to the country's three big entitlement programs — Social Security, Medicaid and especially Medicare. Medicaid

The entitlement programs are what will destroy us. But just try to do anything about social security and you get your political hat handed to you. As we saw recently.

The problem isn't entitlements, the problem is the irresponsible way they are managed by the federal government. Social Security, which has always been a massive revenue generator has been used as a de facto slush fund to make up short falls and fund special projects. As the SSA will tell you, today's benefits are paid from today's SS deductions. The program has been mis-managed for so long that now, with a large segment of the population reaching retirement age, the system is facing a massive shortfall.

The shortfall is due to government spending and mis-management of the SS fund. There is no trust account! The money wasn't invested wisely to show a future dividend for those who paid into it to reap the benefit of their effort and contribution. Anybody with an ounce of common sense could see that the way the system was being managed, it was destined for collapse. Now all these politicians are sitting around wringing their hands, going what do we do now? They are going to do what they've always done at times like this, pass the buck. What needs to be addressed here is government waste and mis-management, not entitlement programs.

The American people, especially Boomers on the Bubble who won't make it without their SS retirement checks, are going to get the shaft. Just look at what is happening to all the private pension funds workers have payed into throughout their careers that are now being handed over to the feds and being paid out pennies on the dollar.

What a rip-off!

Icarus Rising,

Agree with everything you've said. The government never manages any program well. You know the old $500 hammer thing. I think that's why Bush's idea was to privatize part of it and take it out of the governments hands. Boy did we ever here the howls then!

I see all this as another attempt to bring people into giving away to privatization and more profit making for the banking industry that will be making a killing if Americans give up.

Our nation and our present administration in its pursue of wars has given not attention to the pressing needs of the nation and its people that are the priority of its job.

While everybody profits with the way our government make business and manage our tax payer money and so the private entities behind the government, we the people will be the ones to be hit by the BS when it comes down the hill.

Well, we'd better figure out something soon or we're gonna go belly up. I'm wondering what your thoughts are on a solution, Marge?

Originally posted by HimWhoHathAnEar
Well, we'd better figure out something soon or we're gonna go belly up. I'm wondering what your thoughts are on a solution, Marge?

Well as you have noticed lately We the people do not seem to be holding much power anymore in our nation.

Our elected politicians are doing all the thinking, decision making and voting for bills for us.

So we have allowed this to happen and they are not about to give up.

So we are pretty much screw.

Have you seen any protest lately in Washington whenever Bush signs a bill?

At least when he tried to get into the SS privatization the population overwhelmed their states representatives.

But that is just in rare occasions.

posted by marge 6043
Our elected politicians are doing all the thinking, decision making and voting for bills for us.

I'm a little confused, isn't that how it's supposed to work.

At least when he tried to get into the SS privatization the population overwhelmed their states representatives.

That's what I was wondering, privatisation was his idea to fix the problem. What's Marge's idea?

Pull out of the 20+ countries that we currently occupy, slash the military and intelligence Black Projects and pay back the S.S. Fund, then eliminate the record high national debt.

After everything is paid off and we are stabillized then the war hawks can have the government back to screw it all up again.

Tax all foreign money transfers originating in the United States at 25%.

Originally posted by HimWhoHathAnEar


I'm a little confused, isn't that how it's supposed to work.

Actually yes, that is the way is supposed to work, but with so many lobbyist making sure that is their private interest the ones that have priority over the people's it make you wonder as how much of yours or my interest are been taken care off or given priority so we the people don't get screw up.

That's what I was wondering, privatization was his idea to fix the problem. What's Marge's idea?

My idea? I tell you this much, it may work for the new and younger generation entering the work force.

But that was not the group that was targeted by the administration idea, they wanted to get into already established accounts of SS while starting with the young because the need for the money was to urgent.

That is why it failed.

Many people in America are naive but not stupid, many knew exactly what the whole thing was about.

2steps,

We could run, but we couldn't hide. Isolationism solves nothing. We face our problems, or they will come home to us ie 9/11.


Marge,

But that was not the group that was targeted by the administration idea, they wanted to get into already established accounts of SS while starting with the young because the need for the money was to urgent

That is incorrect. The accounts of retiree's and near retiree's were to remain untouched.

Originally posted by HimWhoHathAnEar



The entitlement programs are what will destroy us. But just try to do anything about social security and you get your political hat handed to you. As we saw recently.

Are you sure about that?

Cost of Iraqi War

How many children could be going to pre-school instead

How many children could have been fully insured for one year instead

How many kids could have gone to college instead

How many low-income housing units could have been built instead

How many teachers could have been hired instead

In 2004 there was $1 trillion spent on the following three entitlement programs:

-Social security
-Medicare
-Medicaid

Please tell me which you would like to go after first. The elderly, or the disabled?

You go ahead and pick...I'm doing what the rest of the world's supposed to be doing, supplementing my parents' income so that they can continue to have a home, food and prescriptions. The rest of you need to step up and do the same. But don't you dare touch the $1200 a month of social security income my parents get unless you stop the "sink-hole on a lie" going on halfway around the world first. Because I'd a lot rather my tax dollars go to take care of those among us who need us, than to go to kill my neighbor's son or daughter.



[edit on 10-28-2006 by Valhall]

I'll say it again.

That is incorrect. The accounts of retiree's and near retiree's were to remain untouched.

Nobody's LOSING anything! But that connection to Iraq, wouldn't want to miss that. Thx

That is incorrect. The accounts of retiree's and near retiree's were to remain untouched.

Yes but for people like me and my husband that already are in our fourties we would have been the unwiling targets of this reform.

Why he didn't go for the young people entering the work force? and only them.

Because they were no the target to this plan.

So not thanks.

Originally posted by HimWhoHathAnEar
I'll say it again.

That is incorrect. The accounts of retiree's and near retiree's were to remain untouched.

Nobody's LOSING anything! But that connection to Iraq, wouldn't want to miss that. Thx

Well you don't seem to understand. I'm the first one in line to sign up for them to stop raping me on every paycheck. I don't want them stealing my money for social security or medicare. I'm willing to say - take what you stole from me to date, but just stop right now. Let me invest my money as I please - I do a lot better at it than you.

Oh, and stop spending my money on lies that kill.

posted by valhall
I'm the first one in line to sign up for them to stop raping me on every paycheck. I don't want them stealing my money for social security or medicare. I'm willing to say - take what you stole from me to date, but just stop right now.

I've misunderstood you then. You are for privitization.

The nations that i've lived in, Britain and Australia, can manage pensions and universal health care and our economies are no where near belly up. Take Australia, our economy is booming and we have arguably the best public health system the World has ever seen.

Make no bones about it, the problem facing the United States is not the comparative pennies it chooses to spend on what the rest of the civilized World regard as universal necessities (free public health care and meaningful pensions), but economic mismanagement.

What good is garrisoning troops in 120+ countries around the Globe if 20% of your population lives below the poverty line? What good is waging two simultaneous wars for the supposed security of your nation when you have to kill Social Security to pay for it?

Also how can the mega rich be given tax breaks when there are literally children going without food, education or shelter within your borders? Social justice is not the sole realm of Socialism. You can run a capitalist society with a social conscience. Whoever says you cant is protecting their own sizeable profit margin or personal nest egg.

"But it's the free market economy! We cant interfere, what are you some kinda commie?" Sorry but when a nation has a privately controlled bank controlling every intricacy of the economy it's anything but a free market economy. There is scarcely any difference between the Central Bank model and a Centrally controlled economy ala Soviet Russia. The only difference being that the greed is rooted in the fiscal elite rather than in a Politburo.

I actually dream of the United States bucking the current financial rut that was imposed on her in 1913. The rest of the nations globally have no chance of doing the same until the United States wakes up and does so. Please, hand back the power to create money to Congress. Please, stop paying interest on your money supply. Please, destroy your 3rd Central Bank (The Federal Reserve) like President Jackson did to the Second Bank of the United States. Please, wrest back control of your finances from the banking elite. Please, repeal the illegal income tax. Please, revert to customs and excise as the sole tax imposed on the people.

If you dont, not only will the United States economy go belly up but the rest of the World will eventually have no chance of surviving either.

[edit on 29/10/06 by subz]

I have not yet finished this book, published a decade ago, but it seems almost prescient. I feel it offers a better description to explain our current economic dilemma; how to raise our standard of living on lower wages.

At the beginning of the policy - post War 2 - free trade with a strong dollar meant the US enjoyed a high standard of living on the lowered costs of both goods and energy from around the world. OTOH, it also meant the concomitant loss of good manufacturing jobs in the United States as the years progressed. 30 million to be precise. Today, our well-paid and skilled office worker is forcing the American blue collar worker more and more into the sort of low paid, dead end job that can only be termed economic serfdom. Or, is Wal-Mart to be our savior or is it to be our Terminator? Is Wal-Mart the last hurrah!

American workers have been as victimized by the strong dollar policy as much as they have been by free trade and the trend toward monopolization, and this is why free trade has been a blessing for every nation on earth except the USA, and it's likely to get worse instead of better. A dire warning of worse to come!

Dr. Baktri was correct in stating that monopolies need to be broken up, and that some trade barriers need to be reinstated. We need to consider the adverse impact to the environment of shipping goods which can and should be produced locally instead of halfway around the world. His case for the failure of free trade as global policy was convincing to me. The Democratic party is beginning to question the wisdom of what at first seemed to be a desirable foreign policy.

I recommend the book, “The Myth of Free Trade” Dr. Ravi Baktra, Touchstone, c.1993



[edit on 10/29/2006 by donwhite]

Ah the Democrats, I find it quite ironic that it was actually the Democrats who stood in the way of the big government Federal Reserve. It just goes to show how false the whole right/left paradigm actually is. There is nothing "Republican" in the Federal Reserve.