Street Speculator

However, it never came to fruition.

During President Bush’s 2nd term, he put together a panel to look at privatizing social security. His premise was to allow the American public to manage their own money for retirement instead of the government.

The negative side of this would be that we would now turn ordinary people (Not to sound elitist) into investors. But, from my understanding, the Social Security Trust Fund, similar to the FDIC, is surviving on credit. Meaning, there is no cash in the system and there will probably be none when many of us retire.

For people like me, there is a high likelihood I would not receive any social security benefits. With the present bailout proposition and the costs of financing the War on Terror, I don’t feel very optimistic. Those born after 1960 should not feel optimistic either.

I would not mind investing for my retirement. The U.S. government does not seem to be good at this art. Also, most government sponsored investment plans will not let you pull your money out until either retirement or termination. This means if I had my 401K or 403B dollars going into a fund whose top holdings included Lehman Brothers, Fannie/Freddie, and maybe AIG, it would be down substantially right now. The only option I would have is to switch funds or attempt to ride out the wave. Both of which are very time consuming and would not protect me from losses.

Hopefully one of the presidential candidates will revisit this proposition. I trust my personal money decisions more than I do D.C. politicos.