Re: why anon bank acct?

["Perry E. Metzger" <pmetzger@lehman.com>]

"Robert J. Woodhead" says:
> Ray writes:
> 
> >   Simple. Privatize those parts of government so they can chose
> >the services they want to buy.
> 
> An admirable solution, but it does not take into account the vested
> interests involved.  The only way to deal with them is to design a
> new system that is sufficiently more efficient (and/or wealth
> generating) that they are better off supporting it than opposing
> it.  The U.S. Government has been under construction for over 200
> years; you are not going to break it apart so easily.

Who needs to break it? At the current rate, it will have destroyed
itself within a decade. "Stability" in our fair land is an illusion.
The government cannot possibly pay for all the services it pretends it
can. The deficit is going to rise another $1 Trillion in the next four
years under Bill Clinton's very optimistic projections -- my suspicion
is that the slowdown in economic activity he is creating will make it
rise more like $2 Trillion or more. At some point, the bond buyers
stop buying, and thats the end of the game. The Clinton Administration
is currently pretending to itself that it can add the most expensive
government program of all time, a trillion dollar socialized medicine
program, while all this is happening. Well, let them dream.

Raising taxes at this point will only DECREASE revenue. They cannot
raise more money than they already consume. They can only lower the
deficit by cutbacks, and they are pressing ahead with more new
spending each year in spite of the claims. (When you hear them say
"budget cuts", that means "we are going to spend less than we wanted
to, not less than we spent last year".)

There are also trillions of dollars in off-books unfunded debt, such
as federal obligations to federal retirees, the invisible "social
security trust fund" (hah!), federal obligations associated with loan
guarantees, banking insurance schemes, etc. 

The party will be over soon enough. Humpty Dumpty doesn't need to be
pushed.

Perry