Preparing for the most exciting online video event ever

THE BAILOUT BOYS ARE BACK IN TOWN
(The Boys Are Back in Town, Thin Lizzy)
WilliamBanzai7

Singalong link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FmPhJkdTwU

Guess who just got back today?
Those wild-eyed Bailout Boys of AIG, GM and CITI that had been away
Havent changed, havent much new to say
But man, those cats can keep generating Billions and Billions of losses

They were asking if Uncle Sam is around
How his TARP wallet was, where he could be found
I told them he was hiding somewhere downtown
All the Wall Street bankers driving him crazy

The Bailout Boys are back in town…

The Bailout Boys are Back in town…

You know that Hank Greenberg used to dance a lot
Every day he’d be on the NYSE floor shaking what AIG got
Man when I tell you he was cool, he was red hot
I mean AIG was steaming

That night over at Vikram Pandit’s palace
Sandy Weil got up and slapped Chuck Prince’s face
Man we just fell about the place
That Chuck did’nt want to know, forget him

Friday night in Detroit theyll be dressed to kill
Down at dinos bar and grill
The drink will flow and blood will spill
If GM and the UAW boys want to fight, you’d better let them

That jukebox in the corner blasting out my favorite Banzai7 Bailout Song
The nights are getting warmer, it wont be long
It wont be long till the Bailout summer of 2009
Now that the Bailout Boys are here again

The Bailout Boys are back in town….

If the issue of Social Security comes up, I want you to say one thing — that Social Security will continue to run a surplus for nearly 20 more years. (until sometime in 2027).
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Don’t let anyone get away with saying 2017 — that’s simply false, because the trust fund earns interest, and has enough assets earning interest to keep it in surplus through all of 2026.
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And if anyone says Social Security has an “unfunded mandate” — tell them they are full of crap. Under the current law, an “unfunded mandate” is impossible, because if the trust fund ever runs out of money, benefits are automatically cut — benefit levels are set by law and that law includes the automatic cut if necessary.

Blah, I tried tuning in to your CNN thing, but had to turn it off. They were going back and forth about buying each other lunch and facebook poling. Seemed more like a high school news program than CNN, but maybe I just don’t watch enough network news anymore for an adequate comparison.

-MBirchmeier

@mbirchmeier: I think it was *supposed* to seem more like a high school news program than CNN–I was instructed to pitch my remarks to a younger demographic than the usual CNN crowd. And all the segments were extreeeeemely brief. It was fun hanging around the CNN newsroom in between segments and running into old friends. But nobody would have lunch with me. They all claimed to be too busy.

@plukasiak: No Social Security chatter on my segments. I still disagree with you on the 2017 thing (from the perspective of the rest of the federal budget, Social Security *will* stop running a surplus then), but the point about the “unfunded mandate” is really smart and I will do what I can to promulgate it in the future.

Well I’m glad you had fun. It was just to scattered to listen to at work.
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Was there any particularly thought provoking subjects worth mentioning from this afternoon?
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-MBirchmeier

@plukasiak: No Social Security chatter on my segments. I still disagree with you on the 2017 thing (from the perspective of the rest of the federal budget, Social Security *will* stop running a surplus then), but the point about the “unfunded mandate” is really smart and I will do what I can to promulgate it in the future.
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well, the 2017 number comes directly from the same source that says that SS runs a surplus until 2026 (the SS Trustees report), so your argument is with them.
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Moreover, the federal budget already includes interest payments to the SS Trust — in terms of the budget nothing changes. Indeed, nothing changes in terms of “the budget” even after 2026 — the Treasury notes held by the trust are constantly reaching maturity, and being paid off (just like all treasury notes held by anyone). Right now, because there is surplus, the proceeds from the matured securities are used to buy more securities.
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all that will happen starting in 2027 is that less of the proceed from the maturing treasury notes will be reinvested in new treasury notes. This has no impact on the federal budget*, it will simply mean that a slightly smaller proportion of the national debt will be held by the Trust.
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*the Trust always gets the best interest rates available for the notes that it holds, and considering the fact that the amount of un-reinvested securities will be miniscule when compared to the overall national debt that the US is continuously financing, the redemption of the debt held by the trust will have no noticeable impact on interest rates. And while that rate of redemption increases through 2042 to the point where it could have an impact on interest rates, the problem is not redemption of trust fund debt, but the overall debt load of the United States Government.

one other point… your reference to the federal budget may refer to the dishonest way that the budget deficit is calculated. But if that is the case, the “problem” date is 2010 (or 2011), because that’s when the amount of the annual debt that can be “hidden” in the trust fund starts to decline.
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2017 merely represents the year at which none of the annual deficit can be hidden in the trust in this manner. But this “federal budget problem” associated with the imbalance between taxes collected and benefits paid out doesn’t start in 2017, its simply stops getting any worse at that point.