[Auntie Mame]

I've never read so much BS in one article.

[KeyWest]

Agree. The basic underpinnings of the US economy has kept the swings of the economy fairly low and brought it back to earth when it went too high. After the tech bubble burst, under the old economy, it would have gone into deep depression, but it cannot. It is robust. This sounds like a lot of the buy gold crowd who have been consistently wrong. Or he is selling a book. Take a look at all the books that talk of the 'coming depression" of fill in the year. You get more than a few each decade.

[american spirit]

It's only BS to those that don't understand reality. Don't know what indicators you focus on but if you think things are going swell you need to take one of those inflated pieces of fiat currency and go buy a clue.

[Always Right]

I've never read so much BS in one article.

You must not read "Financial Sense' too often. This is par for the course.

[narses]

See:

Personal Accounts in a Down Market: How Recent Stock Market Declines Affect the Social Security Reform Debate
Executive Summary

by Andrew Biggs

Andrew G. Biggs is a Social Security analyst at the Cato Institute.

The S&P 500 stock index is down almost 40 percent from its peak value in 2000. Where does that leave the case for personal retirement accounts, which would allow workers to invest their Social Security payroll taxes in stocks and bonds through accounts similar to individual retirement accounts or 401(k)s?

The evidence shows that long-term market investment for Social Security, while hardly risk free, bears little resemblance to the "meltdown" scenarios painted by many account opponents. Opponents of personal accounts implicitly assume that workers with accounts would be short-term investors without any nonstock diversification. In the real world, the combination of asset diversification between stocks and bonds and time diversification over long time horizons reduces the risks that a short-term market drop could substantially affect workers' retirement incomes. Even in today's bear market, workers with personal accounts would retire with higher total retirement incomes than the current pay-as-you-go program is able to pay.

Moreover, personal accounts would allow individual workers to take on only as much market risk as they are comfortable with. The public realizes this, and support for personal accounts is higher today than it was at the market's peak.

If personal accounts would be a good policy even today, and if they retain public support even today, it is hard to imagine a circumstance in which they would not. Today's stock market declines do not contradict the case for personal accounts. In fact, they confirm it..

http://www.socialsecurity.org/pubs/articles/bp-074es.html

[hotpotato]

I've never read so much BS in one article.

You actually read all that stuff? :-)

[DCPatriot]

You mean to say you actually *read* it all?

[JoeSchem]

I've never read so much BS in one article.

You don't remember the Time Magazine editorial about the Great Depression of 1987. You probably don't even remember the Great Depression of 1987. Oh, the horrors.

[battousai]

"I've never read so much BS in one article."

Yeah he talks about wheelbarrows, I think he'll need a few to move this article arround...

[GOPJ]

I'll second that.

I've never read so much BS in one article.

[CommandoFrank]

I've never read so much BS in one article.

You actually read the entire article???????