Hillary Favors Privatizing Social Security

by Stephen Lendman

She's been deplorably pro-Wall Street throughout her public life - as president next year in a position to benefit major financial firms more than ever by incrementally privatizing Social Security.

According to journalists David Sirota and Avi Asher-Schapiro, financial services giant Blackstone Group "openly promote(s) a plan to give (Wall Street and other financial) firms control of hundreds of billions of dollars in retirement savings" - savers required to go along involuntarily.

Company president/major Hillary fundraiser Tony James is touted to become her Treasury secretary, according to some observers.

His scheme is a back-door way of privatizing Social Security, a scheme no previous administration dared try. Workers and employers would be required to put designated portion of their retirement savings into "pooled plans run by professional investment managers," according to James.

A single mandatory system would replace individual retirement accounts, diverting a designated portion of Social Security revenues to private hands - financial predators benefitting at the expense of savers.

James claiming they'll have "access to (the) highest quality managers (with) long-term investment horizons" is cover for a giant scam if enacted into law - another way to transfer personal savings to wealthy monied interests, further enriching them, most people none the wiser about how they're being ripped off.

James favors retiree savings invested "like pension plans," including "real estate, private equity, commodities and hedge funds" - generating big fees for financial firms, returns not justifying the costs, according to critics.

Leaked emails showed Hillary praised a presidential commission, recommending Social Security cuts, Sirota and Asher-Schapiro explained.

Earlier this year, James said "(i)f this (proposal) gets enacted, there are going to be thousands and thousands and thousands of asset managers that will benefit…" - major ones like Blackstone and Wall Street banks most of all.

Critic Curtis Loftis, South Carolina Treasurer, said "(t)his new plan depends on sweeping government mandates, the appropriation of trillions of dollars from the private sector that is then handed over to zillionaire investment managers who make no guarantees about rates of returns or discounted fees."

"The only guaranteed benefit I see in this plan is one for wealthy money managers and their cronies. Wall Streeters reading this plan will understand…that having Hillary Clinton and the federal government use its power to aggregate the existing and future retirement funds of working Americans and entrust it to them is the Holy Grail of finance."

Hillary supports the scheme, according to James. "I am hopeful she'll grab this issue once elected (sic) and run with it," he said.

Its end game is ending Social Security as it now works altogether, privatizing trillions of dollars of personal savings, an unprecedented windfall for predatory Wall Street banks and other financial giants if enacted into law.

Hillary's likely ascension to power risks having the most outrageous of all financial scams become the law of the land - one of many reasons to oppose her.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. 

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 

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