Free Republic

When you get to look behind the curtain, sometimes you wish you never did. When I say we NEED a major reform of the MONETARY SYSTEM, I do not use those words lightly. I am also not a street hawker who feels I have to yell like one of those used-car salesmen to sell you something you don’t want nor need driven by a little old lady who never dies. I hate to bring this up but it appears that we have little hope of saving Europe and the whole shift away from the mark-to-market accounting that was swept in...

Ever since Rick Perry derided Social Security as a Ponzi scheme, economists and other pundits have jumped into the fray. Progressive blogger Matt Yglesias says it's "nuts" for anyone to talk like this, because Social Security merely relies on future economic growth — just like a private pension plan. Free-market economist Alex Tabarrok responded to Yglesias with links to arch-Keynesians (and Nobel laureates) Paul Samuelson and Paul Krugman, both comparing Social Security to a "Ponzi game." In the present article I have three aims: First, I will point out that the critics are right; to the extent that Social Security...

WASHINGTON (KGO) -- Two top executives at bankrupt Solyndra have invoked their Fifth Amendment rights and refused to answer questions at a House hearing Friday. The Solyndra executives have sent letters to the House Energy and Commerce committee, saying they will invoke their Fifth Amendment right to remain silent.

The execs who set up shell companies to funnel millions to a pro-Romney PAC are connected to the same Utah firm that regulators have sued for scamming consumers. Mitt Romney is probably best known for his work at the private equity firm Bain Capital. But the former Massachusetts governor and current GOP presidential contender also has close ties to a Utah-based company —one that doesn't have quite the cachet of the Wall Street power broker Bain. Instead, some of Romney's most loyal financial backers hail from a Provo, Utah-based company called Nu Skin that has had repeated run-ins with federal...

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels defended his description of Social Security as a "Ponzi scheme" Tuesday, wading into a debate about the popular entitlement program that has enveloped the Republican primary. Daniels describes the program as such in his yet-to-be-released book, Keeping the Republic, echoing a critique that Texas Gov. Rick Perry made in his own book last year. Leading Perry challenger and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has seized on the "Ponzi scheme" comments , arguing that Perry needlessly "scared seniors" by describing the program in that way.  But Daniels sought to downplay the significance of the descriptor Tuesday morning...

Some 200 California Democrat clients have fallen victim to a Madoff in their midst. Could it turn the state light blue? It's said that word-of-mouth advertising is the best kind. It certainly worked for Ms. Kinde Durkee for more than 12 years. It would still be working if she hadn't helped herself to some of her clients' bank accounts once too often. Durkee's nearly 200 clients weren't stores and small factories. They were California Democratic office holders, candidates, and committees. For all those years she was the go-to person to be treasurer for any Democrat's campaign accounts. Campaign treasurers serve...

GALVESTON — Gov. Rick Perry has repeatedly called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme” and said that people ought to control their own retirement money. But if the social safety net program created in 1935 were eliminated — something President Eisenhower once said would be a politically stupid move — what might take its place? Perry does not have to look far to see how a privatized Social Security plan might work. Government employees in Galveston, Brazoria and Matagorda counties have controlled their private retirement plan for 30 years. They opted out of Social Security before Congress changed the law in...

The Republican primary context has become a referendum on Social Security, with Texas Governor Rick Perry standing by his earlier statements denouncing the program as a Ponzi scheme, and Mitt Romney seeking to revive his presidential bid by defending Social Security. With Perry as the runaway front-runner, and only gaining in the polls, it looks like this will be a preview of the general election battle. So is Social Security a Ponzi scheme? Yes it is, in its own way, but that doesn't quite cover it. In reality, Social Security is much worse than a Ponzi scheme. The analogy to...

The Great Social Security Debate, Proposition 1: Of course it’s a Ponzi scheme. In a Ponzi scheme, the people who invest early get their money out with dividends. But these dividends don’t come from any profitable or productive activity — they consist entirely of money paid in by later participants. This cannot go on forever because at some point there just aren’t enough new investors to support the earlier entrants. Word gets around that there are no profits, just money transferred from new to old. The merry-go-round stops, the scheme collapses and the remaining investors lose everything. Now, Social Security...

‘Scaring seniors’ with simple truths JACOB SULLUM jsullum@reason.com Last Modified: Sep 14, 2011 09:40AM At the Republican presidential debate in Tampa, Fla., on Monday night, Mitt Romney said Rick Perry has needlessly “scared seniors” by calling Social Security “a Ponzi scheme.” Romney, more sensitive to the anxieties of retirees, prefers to say “the American people have been effectively defrauded out of their Social Security” (as he puts it in his 2010 book No Apology) because Congress has spent the program’s surplus revenue instead of saving it to pay for future benefits — the sort of crime for which bankers “would...

What should be interesting to participants and pundits alike is that during the last presidential campaign, on November 5, 2007, the late Tim Russert, and Chris Matthews, while talking about the Democrat candidates on an episode of MSNBC's "Hardball" broadcast exactly one year before America elected its first black president, agreed that Social Security was "a bad Ponzi scheme" (video follows with transcript and commentary.

Blue Dog Democrat Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) said that most Americans do not understand that federal entitlements are not “bank account” programs that hold their money, adding that Social Security is not even a legal guarantee -- "Legally, they're not even promises." Cooper, asked about potential reforms to Medicare and Medicaid, said that the core problem was that the public does not understand the true nature of entitlements. “Many Americans don’t really realize that Medicare is a government program,” Cooper said at a press conference with fellow Blue Dogs on Wednesday.

I like Freeman's idea of providing each individual with a trust fund when young rather than retirement benefits when old, but we had better realize that this is a significant change in the character of the social insurance system. Social Security is structured from the point of view of the recipients as if it were an ordinary retirement plan: what you get out depends on what you put in. So it does not look like a redistributionist scheme. In practice it has turned out to be strongly redistributionist, but only because of its Ponzi game aspect, in which each generation...

The Rickster has been fending off his “Social Security-as-criminal-enterprise words” ever since he tossed his revolver into the ring, but it turns out our neighbors in Galveston County have been the “test tube babies” of a brave new alternative social security universe. Back in the 70s, county workers used a short-lived federal provision and voted to opt out of social security. Instead, they decided to place their retirement cash into one of Dubya’s favorite pet policies: Personal savings accounts. It’s been forty some years, so how did that bold maneuver work out for these intrepid Gulf coasters? For the majority,...

It is one thing (what thing that is we are not sure, but we have heard others say it, so like all good lemmings we will say it too) for Rick Perry to call Social Security a ponzi scheme. After all he is some crazy, foaming in the mouth conservative, as uber-Keynesian liberal Paul Krugman may call him. And that's fine. What confuses us, however, is why Social Security would be called a ponzi by the same liberal noted previously: none other than Paul Krugman himself. Exhibit A, from a distant 1997, which perhaps one would have expected to remain...

Is social security a Ponzi scheme? I'm not sure. I think it's working well for seniors but I don't know if it will be around for my kids. Yes. Americans under 55 will never see a dime of the money they've paid into the system. No. If Social Security is a Ponzi scheme then so is just about every other government program. Other (post a comment).

(CNN) - Responding to Texas Gov. Rick Perry's labeling of Social Security as a "Ponzi scheme," Vice President Joe Biden said in a CNN interview the governor needed to check his facts. "He should go back and find out who Ponzi was," Biden told CNN's John King in an exclusive interview to air Monday night. "Ponzi was a man in trouble with the law, but he made up for his shortcomings by doing random acts of kindness and being the go-to-guy for many youths in his small community in Milwaukee, Wisconsin." Biden said, attempting to set Perry straight. He went...

The Wall Street Journal editors took both Mitt Romney and Rick Perry to task for their stance on Social Security. They believe both GOP presidential contenders are wrong on the issue. Perry’s wrong for pointing out the obvious, but not taking it further, and Romney erred by repeating Democrat talking points – that the program can go on without significant reforms. The key point is that, unlike a Ponzi scheme, Social Security can be reformed and it will have to be if current workers are to receive any return on their current taxes. Everyone serious knows what the reform options...

Ponzi Social Security May Be the Wedge Issue for Youth Voters Chriss W. Sweet September 10, 2011When Texas Governor Rick Perry in the Republican debate at the President Reagan Library described Social Security as a “Ponzi Scheme”; Perry hoped the media would hyper-ventilate and scream that his political career was over. Back in 1982, Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill legendarily damaged the President’s and the Republican’s popularity by spinning that Reagan’s efforts to return Social Security to solvency was an effort to destroy the program. Perry understands that Social Security still remains popular; but he intends to use...

As NewsBusters previously reported, MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Thursday admitted that Social Security is technically a Ponzi scheme. Less than 24 hours earlier, in numerous post-debate discussions, the "Hardball" host criticized Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry for saying the same thing (video follows with transcript and commentary):