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how dishonest and criminally minded their toadies in the White House and in the republican party had become. Remember George Bush was Greenspan's boss. Can you imagine Greenspan going into the oval office and telling Cheney/Bush that massive increases in regulation were needed? (As he exists scene laughing uproariously.)

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ORIGINAL: bluepanda

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The thing about "investment planning" is that it's not a one or two year program. If you are in your 20's or 30's now and don't start to learn about real estate or the stock market for planning for your retirement you are no doing yourself any good. Sure things are tough now...but suppose you were 20 or 30 years old 20 or 30 years ago and was able to put half your and your employers contribution to social security money in the stock market. You would have a heck of a lot more "value" even after this years slump than the $1,000 or $1,500 a month you would be getting today from social security. Only the politicians who derive power by controlling the purse strings of americans voiced negative opinions about allowing some investment in the stock market, and they sold their minions a bill of goods. I guess they felt "change" was not good....for them!

Oh, bullshit, Cory. Come on. The point is, if Bush had managed to transfer the bulk of the social security funds into the stock market 3 years ago, the value of those funds would have been cut almost in half over the last few months. Of the money that was there when he started this crazy crusade - money that is needed to cut checks for retired people right now, this next week - there would only be a little more than half as much now as there was a few months ago. What possible relevance does your bromide about longterm investment strategy for people in their 20s have in this argument? Sounds to me as though the political leaders who refused to let him get away with this fraud were doing a pretty goddamned good job of looking after the best interests of the taxpayers.