Betrayal: Twenty years after engineering a system where people pay higher Social Security taxes, we now
read in the
Los Angeles Times: (emp add)
The individual investment accounts would contribute to national savings only if they could be financed by methods other than borrowing, and in order to slow the rate of borrowing by Social Security, benefits would have to be trimmed, Greenspan said.
"If we move to private accounts, which I approve of," the shift must be done cautiously, he said.
Disgusting. This guy is a complete tool for the finance boys. He casually dismissed conderns about the late 90's bubble, saying that a New Era had arrived, or conversly, that Internet stocks were a lottery ticket. No mention of hype and scams. Now Greenspan is cheerleading a program, individual private accounts, that will enrich Wall Street.
posted by Quiddity at 2/16/2005 11:47:00 AM
I wouldn't call Greenspan a tool-if he was just after money he could have retired years ago and made millions as a respected ex-central banker making speeches, consulting...and just shaking hands. Greenspan is not a tool but one of Ayn Rand's True Believers-he really believes that cutting governement services to the bone will ensure eternal prosperity, make a million flowers (or dollars?) bloom, etc... Fanatics are far more dangerous than the merely corrupt, because they are largely imperious to shame, fear, doubt, or inconvenient facts.
I don't know if A. G. was always this way, or 20 years as the most important economic policy maker in the US federal gov. hardened his early Randite inclinations into inflexible dogma, but his motivation is clearly ideological, not pecuniary (granted that most of the people pushing for SS privatization are cynical greedheads).
