April 17, 2013

They're coming for your Social Security money....

And now they're coming for your Social Security money. They want your fuckin' retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later 'cause they own this fuckin' place. It’s a big club and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club. ...

-George Carlin

Executives from a number of international investment firms are quietly raising a $20 million war chest for a major ad campaign this fall to push for privatizing the Social Security system, according to an article in the June 12 Wall Street Journal.

The ad campaign hopes to convince a skeptical public that the Social Security system is in deep trouble and that only investing in stocks and bonds can save workers' retirement accounts.

The people behind this campaign include executives from Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley, according to the article. Supporters also include Richard Parsons, from the media conglomerate AOL Time Warner, Lawrence Lindsey, President Bush's economic advisor on the topic, and an outfit calling itself the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security, which was founded by the National Association of Manufacturers and other big business associations.

One current scheme for privatizing Social Security would siphon off an estimated $86 billion each year into investments. Since firms like Citigroup make their money by charging a fee on stock transactions, it is easy to see why they are so interested in "saving Social Security" through private investments.

http://scfl.org/uln.php?ulnid=708

Notice the date: 2001.

12 years later: a Daily Kos article about the "Third Way"...

Let me attempt again to make the basic facts clear. Third Way is not a “liberal think tank.” It does not take “a centrist approach.” It is not run by “fellow progressives.” It is not concerned with “protecting entitlements.” It is not even a “think tank.” Third Way is a creature of Wall Street. It’s version of “protecting” the safety net was made infamous during the Tet offensive in Viet Nam when the American officer explained that “it became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.” Third Way is the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party, which seeks to defeat Democratic candidates like Elizabeth Warren running against Wall Street sycophants like Senator Scott Brown and seeks to unravel the safety net programs that are the crown jewels of the Democratic Party. Wall Street’s “natural” party is certainly the Republican Party, but Wall Street has no permanent party or ideology, only permanent interests Third Way serves its financial interests and the personal interests of its senior executives. Wall Street has always been the enemy of Social Security and its greatest dream is to privatize Social Security. Wall Street’s senior executives live in terror of being held accountable under the criminal laws for their crimes. They became wealthy by leading the “control frauds” that drove the financial crisis and the Great Recession. This is why Wall Street made defeating Warren a top priority.

Third Way is run by a man who Laursen terms an “acolyte” of Pete Peterson. Peterson is a Republican, Wall Street billionaire who has two priorities – imposing austerity on America and privatizing Social Security. Privatizing Social Security is Wall Street’s unholy grail. They would receive hundreds of billions of dollars in fees and ensure that their firms were not only “too big to fail,” but “too big to criticize” if they could profit from a privatized retirement system. (We do not know who funds Third Way because it refuses to make its donors public. Given who dominates its Board of Trustees, however, the donors must be overwhelmingly from Wall Street.)

Third Way’s self-description has some elements of honesty, admitting that it is “led by a prominent private sector Board of Trustees, drawn from finance, industry, academia, the non-profit sector and government.” The order is revealing – the board is dominated by finance, with a thin veneer provided by industry, and with the barest patina of “academics” and “government.”

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/04/09/1200312/-Bill-Black-Wall-Street-Uses-the-Third-Way-to-Lead-its-Assault-on-Social-Security

Meanwhile, the current Treasury Secretary pushes Wall Street's agenda:

In written responses during his Senate confirmation hearing, Lew said both he and the Obama administration oppose a similar tax in the U.S. Now it appears that Lew doesn’t just oppose the tax here in the U.S., but is using his bully pulpit to trash talk the tax among our trading partners. Particularly egregious is that he is traveling on the U.S. taxpayers’ dime to attempt to defeat a tax that the majority of Americans support.

In a 2012 national survey by the Mellman Group, 65 percent of respondents thought that increasing “taxes on Wall Street banks that helped create our economic problems” was a superior plan than reducing the nation’s deficit by cutting spending on Social Security, Medicare or environmental protection.” Such a U.S. tax would support another public interest – slowing the use of high frequency trading which is effectively looting the retail investor.

But despite that lopsided public opinion, the President proposes to shift the burden to seniors by using a chained CPI to cut Social Security benefits while his Treasury Secretary, who took $940,000 in taxpayer bailout funds to Citigroup as a personal bonus for himself, tries to stall a tiny tax on Wall Street by shuttling across Europe on the U.S. taxpayers’ dime. Does it get any more revolting than this?

http://wallstreetonparade.com/2013/04/treasury-secretary-jack-lew-pushes-the-anti-social-security-pro-wall-street-agenda/

This is just the tip of the iceberg, of course. There's plenty more to make your blood boil. Just Google "Social Security and Wall Street", for example, to find some history. Be warned, though: the Democrat (as in, Party of the People) in you may go into a rage...