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Investing 101 - Jun 17, 2005 - Printable Version
- President Bush’s Social Security Agenda - Steal your Money the Easy Way
by Dave Patch
The President has hit twenty-six states as of this month campaigning to the people of this Country his Social Security reform package. Desperate to reach people who would listen, the President went so far as to bring his campaign through a high school in Pennsylvania speaking to students not yet old enough to vote. I guess he is serious about the Privatization of Social Security, and why not? In the Presidents Remarks to the Pennsylvania Future Farmers of America [FFA] the Presidents opening remarks on Social Security were:
“The job of the President is to confront problems, and not pass those problems on to future Presidents and future Congresses. The easy path is to do nothing. That's the easy political path. The tough path is to come together and get something done. But let me tell you something -- by doing nothing, you're about to hear that we will have done a disservice to a younger group of Americans coming up. “
The President bounding his plan by telling congress that “a reformed system must reassure future generations that those who depend most on Social Security will have the most protection in their retirement.”
And then came the rhetoric:
President Bush:“So, I've got some ideas to permanently solve the Social Security deficit and the problem, so we can say to youngsters, when you work and pay something into the payroll system, there will be something for you when you retire. And I've got another idea that I want Congress to consider, and that I want people in this country to listen to carefully. And it's to make sure the system is a better deal for younger workers.” Privatize Social Security. Invest portions of your taxes into stocks and bonds.
President Bush: “Now, first, let me describe how Social Security actually works. It's called a pay-as-you-go system; you work hard and you pay through payroll taxes, and we go ahead and spend. We spend on the benefits for retirees, and then, with the money left over, we spend on programs. See, some people think where the Social Security system is one where we take your money and we hold it for you, and then when you retire we give it back. That's not the way it works. You pay, we pay out the money for the retirees, and the money left over -- see, there's money left over until 2017 -- it goes ahead and funds all the different programs of government. And do you know what's left behind? Paper. IOUs in a file cabinet in West Virginia. Those are the assets of the Social Security system. “
But what the President does not address is the safety and integrity of the very system he wants the people investing their money in. Wall Street!
Investing Social Security into Wall Street would be a boon to the people but not the people he was speaking to. Privatizing social security is a financial boon to the people of Wall Street. Wall Street will reap huge benefits off Commissions that will ultimately finance more highly compensated executives. Institutions working off a rigged system and secret handshakes will have more operating capital to consume. Wall Street will continue to operate as they have in the past, present, and future on a premise of fraud, manipulation, and deceit. Now they would do so with the retirement savings of all America as the new food ripe for the taking.
To open the speech to the FFA the President spoke of his responsibilities as President to confront issues and not pass them on to future Presidents or Congress. If that is the case, why has the President ultimately shut down any public discussions or correction to the issues of Securities Fraud that exists in our markets? Fraud that is so pervasive it could collapse the markets themselves? Where has the President been to address the illegal shorting of securities [counterfeiting stocks] and the settlement failures that result from those illegal trades? Why has the White House and Republican controlled Congress denied the rights of hundreds of thousands of concerned investors?
In June 2004, I was contacted by a Washington Lobbyist who claimed he had been asked by the White House to put together a white paper on the issue of naked shorting and was looking for assistance. In his closing the lobbyist stated “Hang in there. Bush is aware of this issue and is concerned.” To me, that means the President or at least his staff knows of the issue. I will presume the President was made aware of it during an April 2004 Small Business Council Meeting for Congressman Rick Renzi (R-AZ) where the subject matter was addressed with White House Staffers present.
Yet nothing has happened. Concerned but not willing to publicly address it?
The results of a secret SEC/NASD task force investigations into naked shorting has been the release of a reform out of the Securities and Exchange Commission (Regulation SHO) that violated the very laws passed down by Congress under the Securities Acts of 1934. The SEC grandfathered all past illegal shorting violations due to the shear magnitude of the problem they uncovered. Professor Leslie Boni, a visiting economics scholar at the SEC even presented a study conducted where she identified strategic planning of failures by the industry in order to secure profits. Still the SEC grandfathered the Industries sins for fear of a Bear Run on the marketplace.
Senator Robert Bennett (R-UT) would later chastise SEC Chairman William Donaldson in a March 2005 Senate Hearing, claiming Regulation SHO is not working. People continue to be abused by the markets. The Republican Senator suddenly went underground after that speech with rumors out of D.C. of a closed door Republican Party communication. Keep Quit on this issue was the report.
Apparently the Republican Party does not want to expose to the general population perceptions of more trouble with the integrity of the markets while the President is out campaigning every state for Social Security reforms. Wall Street is big business and Social Security into Wall Street is a big-business package tied with a bright Red Ribbon. The ribbon made up of Red Flags the President is willing to ignore.
So when the President stated only this week that the problem with Social Security is that what is left behind is nothing more than an IOU in a file cabinet in Virginia I laughed at his mockery. To the President an IOU is a bad thing. To Wall Street the IOU is their hidden treasure.
Naked shorting abuses result in nearly $6 Billion of IOI’s carried daily on the books of Wall Street. IOI’s that, unlike Social Security, the people know nothing about. It’s part of the Wall Street Secret, their Chinese wall between their books and the public. Wall Street Institutions take orders on stocks they do not own to sell and sell it to you anyway. They then put an IOI in your account called a journal entry to promise a future delivery of shares. Their intent, like our Social Security System, is that by the time you come calling for that IOI it has devalued down to near zero. But by then it is too late for you as Wall Street moves on to the next victim.
Wall Street can cover those small costs of devalued stocks with the cost being pennies on the dollar to what their client paid. A fire sale! The profits are used as leverage for lucrative pay raises to the executives and through the diverting of monies into the wealthy clients of Hedge Funds. The real Bush Agenda.
Mr. President, your ideals to fix Social Security are admirable. Your solution is not.
Fix Wall Street first so that the small investor, the average American, the retiree, can safely put their money into these markets without it being a rigged game to divert the proceeds to the wealthy of this nation. Act like a President determined to protect the majority of this nation by dealing with the issues of fraud and deceit that your Party is presently trying to cover up.
A former SEC Enforcement attorney claims that Wall Street is not a place for the average person to invest their money, as they have no chance against the rigged market conditions. Fix the market, get rid of the rigged conditions, and then think about investing our retirement savings into a fair and safe place.
You claim, “The easy path is to do nothing” and that is exactly what you have done to date. Nearly $1 Trillion in fraud against the retail investor and the President has sat on a solution to benefit the victims.
This isn’t about Political parties; it is about the ethics and integrity of all in Washington.
(Editor's note: Reprinted by permission from http://www.investigatethesec.com/ . The issue of stock counterfeiting through naked short selling is the single most important financial crisis facing our country today. With the recently announced resignation of SEC Chairman William Donaldson, Bush has named Rep. Christopher Cox to replace him. (SEC's Donaldson out, Cox in: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back)The Faulking Truth strongly opposes Cox's nomination, and believe that he will not effectively deal with the naked short selling scandal, and will undermine current reforms as well. Contact your representatives, and tell them what you think!)
Contact Rep. Christopher Cox yourself, and ask him what he intends to do to "stop the abusive and fraudulent practice of naked short selling" if he becomes Chairman of the SEC.
http://cox.house.gov/html/contact_email.cfm
Washington office:
Phone: (202) 225-5611
Fax: (202) 225-9177
Orange County, CA office:
Phone: (949) 756-2244
Fax: (949) 251-9309
Voice your opinion to your state's representatives at http://www.congress.org/congressorg/home/
To contact members of the US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, go here and click on the members' names, and tell them to oppose Cox's nomination:
http://banking.senate.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Information.Membership
To contact members of the Senate Finance Committee, go here and click on the members' names:
http://finance.senate.gov/sitepages/committee.htm
To contact those Congressmen who have already had the courage to speak out about the naked short selling scandal known as Stockgate:
Senator Robert Bennett (R-UT)
http://bennett.senate.gov/contact/dc.html
Rep. Joe Wilson, (R-SC)
http://joewilson.house.gov/Contact
Senator Richard Shelby (D-AL)
senator@shelby.senate.gov
Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL)
http://durbin.senate.gov/sitepages/contact.cfm
Senator Susan Collins (R-ME)
http://collins.senate.gov/high/contactemail.htm
Senator James M. Talent (R-MO)
http://talent.senate.gov/Contact/default.cfm
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