Banksters Still Trying To Get Their Hands On Social Security

Bill Black: A group of Democrats called “The Third Way” are working with President Obama towards the “grand betrayal” on social security.

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay in Baltimore.

And welcome to this week’s edition of The Black Financial and Fraud Report with Bill Black, who’s an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri–Kansas City. He’s a white collar criminologist, a former financial regulator, and author of the book The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One. Thanks for joining us again, Bill.

BILL BLACK, ASSOC. PROF. ECONOMICS AND LAW, UMKC: Thank you.JAY: So what caught your attention this week?

BLACK: Well, last time we talked there was the problem that I pointed out, that Obama was promising, if he were reelected, that he was going to enter into what he calls the grand bargain—and what I call the great betrayal—in which they would put cuts in the safety net on the table and begin the process of gutting Social Security, which is, of course, Wall Street’s greatest dream.So the first thing that happened, even before the election, there’s a group called the Third Way—which styles itself as moderate Democrats but has a board that is completely dominated by Wall Street—said, oh, you know, this is terrible, this talk of it being a betrayal; it’s the only choice we have to save America. And then as soon as Obama won—in fact, as soon as he was projected to win, commentators began talking about the very first thing the president needs to do is to enter into this supposed grand bargain (to me, great betrayal). And now we have a flurry of written stuff saying that that’s—it’s vital that Obama do just that.Out of the box we have, of course, leading the way, as it always does, The Washington Post, whose greatest goal is to start the privatization of Social Security. And they have a prominent op-ed by Erskine Bowles, he of Bowles–Simpson. This was the BS report that said before the election we needed to start the process of privatizing Social Security and cutting back the safety net.

JAY: For people—Bill, for people that don’t know the issue that well, what does that mean, privatizing Social Security? How would that affect people?

BLACK: So Social Security is an exceptionally well-run program with incredibly low administrative costs that has gotten people, you know, a healthy retirement. And it’s changed old age in America from about 50 percent of the time being in poverty to a life that you can lead with some degree of dignity.But Wall Street’s idea is, instead of the money coming from the government, let’s take all, or at least a big chunk of it, and put it in the equivalent of individual retirement accounts, IRAs, through Wall Street. And, of course, this would be trillions of dollars of investment, and every year they would get scores of billions of dollars in fees off of it. So this is the unholy grail of Wall Street.READMOREHERE