IOUs - February 23, 2012

For what seems like forever, I have been hearing GOP flacks carrying on that SSS is bankrupt, and that the US bonds that constitute its reserve are nothing more reliable than “a pocket full of worthless IOUs.” So it now comes as a surprise to hear the new line: that the temporary pause in the 2% of the employment tax will deplete the solidity of SSS. It would appear that GOP has been paying no attention to their own malarkey, which is about what it is worth. In fact US bonds are the gold standard of national indebtedness and there is no way to degrade even a bad bond below the value of worthless paper. Of course, that comment would be germane if GOP valued their own pronouncements over worthless talk, which they do not seem to do. For an important party to include in their claptrap such contradictions reaches way down beneath cheap talk and into the realm of nonsense. So this latest two-face should qualify as open fraud, beneath the quality of deception that would honor the literacy of even the present low level of US elementary education today. An honest reaction would be for Obama to acknowledge that any shortfall would be made up in a tax increase as soon as the economic revival makes that sound. Judging by their indifference to logic GOP could be expected to switch to crying tax increase without even seeing that the anticipated increase would be years in the future. It makes almost no difference whether their contempt for reason flows from their poor opinion of our thinking or that of their own. I only hope that the Dem Party will hold them up for ridicule if they do it again