CRISIS?

"The people who hustled America into a tax cut to eliminate an imaginary budget surplus and a war to eliminate imaginary weapons are now trying another bum's rush."

Paul Krugman explains Bush's Social Security Privatization Phaseout to Rolling Stone. My favorite segment is this little revelation:

RS: But what if stocks do well? Isn't it possible that privatization would work?

PK: The only possible way that stock returns can be high enough to make privatization work is if the U.S. economy grows at three to four percent a year for the next fifty years. But Social Security's own trustees expect the economy's growth rate to slow to 1.8 percent. If that happens -- if their own assumptions are correct -- then privatization would be a disaster. And if that doesn't happen -- if the economy continues to grow at a steady rate -- then the trust fund is good for the rest of the century, and we don't need privatization.

So, if Bush's scheme goes according to plan, we will have a financial disaster...

This is merely a continuation of his first term economic policies.