is the title of this paper by Kent Smetters, which is my way of saying thank you to William Polley for refereeing the debate between a Dead Parrot (Victor) and the Baby Angrybear (that’d be me). Kent’s paper puts the 2018 v. 2042 debate into a nice context both theortetically and historically. Kent also presents […]

The nation’s major lenders (esp. the big credit card issuers and auto finance companies) will reap significant returns on the investments that they have made in the form of campaign contributions to members of Congress (particularly Republicans). In return for a few million dollars in contributions, lenders are being rewarded with passage of the bankruptcy […]

The Dead Parrot responds to my contention that the 1983 Soc. Sec. reforms prefunded the baby boomers retirements: Ok, I’ll say it. The 1983 reform and Trust Fund didn’t work. The payroll tax led to increased government spending (although the excess tax revenue under Reagan wasn’t terribly large). But more critically, the IOUs in the […]

David Altig summarizes some of the (unfair) comments on Cranky Brad You might get a sense of why this is unfair by skipping my comment and going straight to Brad’s right after mine. But on reading the explosion of comments since Brad challenged Mankiw’s contention that Bush’s privatization will not lower national savings, I may […]

Jck the Hack Snow appeared on ABC’s This Week and made it clear that the Bush White House is interested in the carve-out version of privatization and not the add-on version of personal accounts. He claimed that this plan, which takes away some of your retirement funds, can make you better off because of the […]

Donald Luskin wants you to believe that Al Gore supports George Bush’s privatization proposal: There’s a way that the advocates of reform could easily make this case. All they have to do is borrow a famous buzzword from none other than Al Gore. No, I’m not kidding. The fact is that personal accounts are nothing […]

The BIS today issued the March edition of The BIS Quarterly Review. One of the interesting statistics contained in it is the fraction of foreign currency assets owned by international banks that is held in dollars. This fraction seems to have fallen during 2003 and 2004: March 7 (Bloomberg) — Asian banks, including central banks, […]

This story by Rex Nutting of MarketWatch warmed the cockles of my heart, for two reasons. First, because at least one member of the regular business press seems to be catching on to Greenspan: Greenspan did President Bush two big favors this past week, endorsing the president’s calls for fundamental reforms in Social Security and […]

Upcoming DebateSocial Security: Is It Really a Crisis?A free public debate in New York CityTuesday, 15 March 2005 – 7pm-8:30pm New York Society for Ethical Culture2 W 64th Street, New York, NY 10023(on the corner of Central Park West)Featuring Michael Tanner, Director of Health & Welfare Studies, The Cato Institute, and Paul Krugman, author and […]

It looks like I have to drag out the only Andrew Biggs piece that ever got something right. Why? It seems that Human Events has featured Congressman Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) latest plan to destroy Social Security: Ryan: There’s a safety net underneath the accounts, which means you’ll get what you would have otherwise gotten with […]