Bush used two sets of numbers for his lies on SS. His numbers on the supposed superiority of the return on invested SS money was predicated on a sustained expansion of GDP the country has NEVER experienced, and the supposed lack of return on SS was based on annual GDP figures well below those the country was experiencing. He gave us a pie-in-the-sky, totally unrealistic, never happened before, better than best case scenario for the performance of privately invested funds, and a worse scenario than was extant at the time for SS. He was comparing apples to oranges, and lying. In the first place, when comparing relative performance, you have to use the same baseline. You also have to compare things that are comparable. SS is not and was never conceived as an investment, so comparing it with private investment is meaningless. There must also be a real relationship between the metric chosen as the baseline and that which it is purported to measure. There is no relationship between the stock market and the economy. The only stock market investment that benfits the economy is an IPO and subsequent public offerings by the company issuing the stock. Investor to investor stock sales are just churning, and have nothing to do with the economy. Go to the Commerce Dept website and look up the leading economic indicators. There is ZERO mention of the NYSE or NASDAQ or the DJI, because they don't indicate shit. In the seven recessions that preceded the one in which we are now mired (and which we can't include in this example, because it isn't done yet), the DJI was up during two, down during two, and even on the other three. Statistically, that translates to no correlation. Inventories is an indicator, with an inverse correlation to the economy. When inventories are up, the economy is heading down, consistently. Housing starts is another indicator, with a direct correlation. When they are down, so is the economy, consistently. But two up, two down, and three even has less predictive power than an Ouija board or Punxsutawney Phil.
The greedy pricks in the investment banks wanted that money for themselves. I will guarantee you if the SS trust fund is ever invested in the market, It will be gone in less than a year, and probably within 6 months, and the Wall Street pigs will be ever so surprised that the fund is gone, and they'll use terms like "market volatility, and it will be totally unforeseen, but it will be gone. Anybody who thinks different has not been paying attention for the last thirty years.
