The party's over

Bill Frezza of RealClearMarkets breaks the bad news that the jig is indeed up for one of the Federal government's oldest Ponzi schemes as of today, not some nebulous time far down the road:

"This just in from the trustees that issue the annual report on the health of those two pillars of the modern entitlement state: Medicare and Social Security. For the first time in its history the Social Security program will pay out more money than it takes in. This watershed event will occur this year, to the tune of $41 Billion dollars. Under any rational accounting standards this makes the Social Security program bankrupt. And that's right now, not in 25 years when the so-called Trust Fund becomes insolvent. 

You see, most pension programs hold income producing assets in their Trust Funds. Stocks, bonds, real estate, oil and gas partnerships, that sort of thing. A fully funded pension program owns enough of those assets to pay its liabilities even if the company closes its doors and not a penny more of new money comes in from current employees.

Social Security plays by a different set of rules enshrined under the New Deal and Great Society programs. These are the same rules that landed Bernie Madoff in jail. Although the Social Security system has been regularly taking in billions for decades and socking it into its Trust Fund just like a normal pension plan, Congress has just as regularly been draining the money out for current spending. All of the money collected from every American's paycheck throughout all of our careers is now gone. In its place are not stocks, bonds, real estate, and oil and gas partnership. In its place are IOUs from Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Charlie Rangel, and Barney Frank. $2.5 Trillion dollars worth of IOUs."

Just wait until the great majority of Baby Boomers begin coming on line to the retirement rolls in the next couple of years, all of them expecting those Social Security checks to arrive promptly every month along with their shiny new socialized health care benefit that's also currently planned to be paid for with Chinese Monopoly money. 

Whatever will they do when those peasants realize that the "entitlement" cupboard is completely bare due to blatant thievery by the thieves in Congress over the last half-century?