Thursday, January 10, 2013

Savings and Loans


In a way, part of me wants to get pissed off now that the FedGuv is replacing the bonds in the government retirement accounts with IOU's from the treasury.  If you don't already know about this, it is part of the “extraordinary measures” of the Washington charade.

Treasury is reducing the amount of debt held by a federal employees retirement fund, known as the G-fund.  What they don't say is the reduction is made by replacing the short term government bonds kept there by a hand-printed IOU from Timmy Geithner.

At first, when this last happened during the previous installment of the Washington debt-crisis-follies,  they looted the G-fund and replaced it when the check came in.  So I sat down and though about it for a while.  I drank a glass of wine and watched the sun go down and came to the not-very-earth-shattering conclusion that they are just changing the form of the IOU.

Bonds are IOU's.  Nothing more nothing less.  When the clowns in the House of Representatives go to grandstanding about not paying the bills (read here, raising the debt limit) all they are doing is making themselves look like asses.  If Timmy and Barry want to give them more rope by replacing on IOU in an account with another IOU, what the hell is the problem.

I figure that my retirement fund has no better than a 50/50 chance of getting to the promised land anyway.  At least this way I can derive some comedy points by watching the clowns shoot themselves in the foot.

1 comment:

russell1200 said...

When the bonds are being used to fund continuing operating costs it strikes me pretty much as a straight transfer payment.