End The Federal Budget Shellgame!

Here's a modest proposal:
Forbid federal agencies from 'purchasing' each others' debts!

The BIG BIG BIG one is the so-called Social Security "Lockbox". All those trillions of dollars of 'savings' have really just been used to prop-up our deficit spending, through the SSA 'purchasing' Treasury bills. Instead, I propose they be required to only purchase home loans. In this way, the "lockbox" would actually own tangible assets and would also provide a steady market for home mortgages.
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There is no Social Security Trust Fund

Here's a quick follow-up to my previous blog re non-existent Social Security Trust Fund. A recent Atlantic Monthly article pointed-out that the "trust fund" actually consists of nothing more than a filing cabinet full of (worthless) Treasury Bonds.

Which led me to this 2005 story in USA Today,
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-04-05-trust-fund_x.htm

I understand that the government faces a difficult situation:
How do you 'bank' or otherwise invest the excess income (which is really just a loan) from Social Security? 'Investing' in the government's own bonds, however, seems misleading -- if not illegal or even treasonous!

I wish there were a way of forcing the federal government to:

1. Stop buying Treasury bonds
2. Remove the SS overpayments from the federal budget, i.e., so they weren't being used to paper-over deficit spending

Maybe they could use the SS money to buy gold or oil reserves, or something else that would represent a long-term (>20 years) investment?

Tirade against Federal Budget and Bank Bail-outs

I'm so tired of hearing all this pointless drivel about the economy and the banks and new Stimulus bill. The basic fact that never seems to get stated is this:
The banks lost our money.

So what do we do about it? So far it looks like the only politically expedient solution is to 'print' more money, devaluing our remaining money in the process. But there are other solutions and there's also more back-story to how we got here.

The really important issue that's being ignored is the so-called -- and NON EXISTENT -- Social Security Trust Fund. For decades now the government has been using the excess income from social security withholding to paper-over our deficit spending. Now that money is going to come due and IT'S GONE. Printing more money could 'fix' this problem, too, but only if we stop cost of living adjustments (COLA) and thereby screw all the people who are expecting SS to support them.

Frankly, part of me isn't sympathetic. I mean, all the baby boomers who are about to get screwed by SS are the same people who've been benefiting from artificially low government deficits -- yes, LOW, because otherwise the deficit would have swelled long ago, and taxes would have had to have been raised. So why should I now have to pay all those 'back taxes' ?

Back to the first issue re banks, why isn't anyone talking about a 'windfall profits' tax on real-estate speculators? These are the people who sold houses at the top of the housing bubble (in 2005/06) but did not turn around and reinvest those funds in another house. This is where all "the bank's" money went! It should be easy enough to find these people based on their tax returns. I don't mean to be punitive, in fact, I congratulate them on their financial acumen (and luck). But isn't this the very definition of "windfall profits", i.e., profit at the unreasonable expense of others?

Since the FDIC is totally gonna run out of money I say we recover some of that lost money and directly funnel it back to the original 'owners' via FDIC bailouts of personal savings.
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