Remora

Three Blind Mice

No. Many more blind mice than that. Herds of 'em. The WP has a funny article today about the loosening of support, among the Republicocracy, for diverting Social Security into private accounts to be run by all of us, individually, usin' our God given ingenuity. Apparently as 401(k)s come back filled with pocket lint, and retirement accounts are wiped out, the pilfering of Social Security is not the call to colors it was in the past:


"In some cases, GOP lawmakers such as Reps. George W. Gekas (Pa.) and Charles W. "Chip" Pickering Jr. (Miss.) are opposing Bush's proposal after praising it in the past. At least three Republican congressional challengers -- Rick Clayburgh (N.D.), William J. Janklow (S.D.) and Jon Porter (Nev.) -- have disavowed the idea of private accounts. Many other Republicans are playing down previous endorsements of privatizing all or part of Social Security as a way to bolster the system before it goes broke."

Tergiversation, on this issue, is spine-snapping. Witness the sullen Mark Kennedy. Kennedy, along with some 117 other legislators, signed a letter expressing max support for privatizing Social Security. It turns out he wasn't quite in his right mind that day -- like Hamlet, he was wandering distracted about D.C., construing the shapes of clouds. Wouldn't you know it? Some nefarious villain, probably a Democratic operative, obviously thrust the letter into his hands and told him it was about supporting motherhood and pledging to honor the Golden Rule.

"In Minnesota's 6th District, Rep. Mark Kennedy, a GOP freshman locked in a tough reelection fight, has tempered his support for creating private accounts. Although he signed the same letter as Pickering, he is campaigning feverishly to convince voters he has not switched his position.After initially denying to local reporters that he signed the letter, Kennedy now will only say: "I support exploring ways of strengthening Social Security. I don't know what those ways are."

Mr. Kennedy might want to explore the Argentina crisis. There was a, boldly heretical article about Argentina in the Times Sunday paper. Larry Rohter slipped through the neo-liberal police somehow. In his intro grafs, he highlights the fact that the IMF, backed by the US, has approved loans for Brasil and Uruguay, but not Argentina. Why? Well, the brunt of the article is that Argentina is in the doghouse as a deterrent. But Rohter's more subversive point is that the investing class that is punishing Argentina brought on Argentina's woes, in large part, by suggesting the "golden straightjacket" policies Argentina adopted, to such acclaim, in the nineties:

"... a growing number of independent analysts now maintain that many of Argentina's troubles stem from having followed Washington's advice in the first place and that the formula being insisted upon is only making matters worse."

The formula is, as LI readers know: cut back on social spending, achieve budget surpluses, maximize the private sector and cut the public sector to the bone. Etc. The libertarian dream. Otherwise known as the nightmare of reason.

To get back to Mr. Kennedy's voyage of exploration, one of the interesting tidbits in Rohter's article concerns the effects of privatizing social security. Argentina took the Chile route in the nineties and did just that:

"In reality, most of Argentina's deficit is simply the result of arbitrary accounting procedures and not a reflection of wastefulness. By privatizing the social security system in 1994, much in the fashion the Bush administration is now proposing in the United States, the Argentine government could no longer count social security payments as revenues and had to move them outside the budget.Had Argentina not privatized social security at the urging of the I.M.F., it would actually have shown a budget surplus in recent years. Indeed, according to another study published by the Center for Economic and Policy Research early this year, government spending in Argentina has remained remarkably steady, at about 19 percent of G.D.P. throughout the 1990's."

This is all the more interesting insofar as the G.O.P., outside of its consensus advice to pee wee countries in the Southern Hemisphere, has become remarkably careless about budget deficits. LI sees nothing wrong with a budget deficit per se, but Bush's seems to have the same structure as R. Reagan's --there's no self-limiting mechanism built into it. It seems to be the start of something that is going to get worse, a lot worse, in fact, if the stock market flatlines. We do wonder what the deficit would be minus the Social security surpluses that they pop like candy up in D.C.