Considering it's the Bush administration, I'd say we'll soon see the coming back of slavery-for-debt, like in ancient Greece and Rome.

indentured servitude and second class citizens and a permanent low pay non citizen work force and out sized manufacturing jobs shipped overseas.
Ye gods. There is the Bush world view of our future.

Also, there'll be chaos in the real estate market when all these baby boomers try to sell their McMansions to finance their retirements at the same time.

It's like people who claim to have valuable collections. They're not valuable unless there's a buyer.

Speaking of retirement Greenspan just recommended cutting Social Security benefits to help reduce the deficit.

The masterplan begins to unfold.

The most alarming thing, that you didn't mention, was the Greenspan warning on the impact of demographic trends on our social system. That is, the aging and longevity of the baby boomers. He said (paraphrasing of course), that no way social security and medicare can withstand the demands. There isn't enough money.

So, my prediction? Some combination of means testing, tax hikes and benefit reductions.

Greenspan also warned that any tax hikes would be dangerous to the economy, and he almost pleaded for spending cuts. (Good luck on that one, neither party seems to be very interested in cutting spending. Bush is spending like a mad man, and Kerry is promising all kinds of "free" stuff on the campaign trail).

Regarding jobs... Did you know that there are more Americans employed today than ever? Check out the household survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/lf/aat1.txt

I kind of wonder why the Bush team just doesn't counter Kerry's accusations. Maybe they will later.

The Bushies and their ilk have a feudal view of the world: they own it and we work it; capital and labor.

The masterplan begins to unfold.

Indeed. Wage Slavery and Class Serfdom.

At the Impeach Bush Meetup on Monday, the conversation turned to Bush's smirk, and what it expresses about his character. I believe it signals his utter contempt for everyone and everything that is not part of his upper crust world view. His upper class sense of entitlement is so overwhelming, it shuts out everything else. In Bush's mind, he was born to rule, and born to roll back every progressive reform of the 20th century. It's no accident that George Herbert Walker and Prescott Bush picked Adolph Hitler as their European front man, to crush the trade unions and stand up to the Soviet Union. In their minds (and Dubya's) the New Deal was a communist plot to take from them the power and privilege that was their birthright.

Back to the topic at hand. Between the shrinking M3 money supply, and Greenspan's ominous comments about Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, it seems that he is signaling that the party is going to end -- on November 3rd, or shortly thereafter. But I don't understand why -- what is Greenspan trying to do? Signal the investor class to be prepared to liquidate their assets? Prepare for a crash in the housing market? Whatever his intent, it looks ominous from here.

Are there no workhouses? Are there no cardboard signs for the feckless poor?

No, no, no.

You guys have to think more elegantly. How do you a) shore up the increasingly shaky private pension and social security systems, b) deliver assets into the hands of earners while they are young enough to enjoy them, and c) shore up the public's perception of the Bush administration as a bulwark against international evildoers?

Very easy: release a SARS-like bioweapon. SARS had an interesting epidemilogical profile--it wiped out people over 65. A few months of plague, with the constant crisis news and updates from a solemn but resolute President, followed by the discovery of a vaccine, ought to remove enough oldsters to make the pension system feasible for another decade or two.

Add in "evidence" that al-Qaeda and [weakly defended nation] cooked up and released the weapon, and not onlywill the nation be restored to fiscal security, but we'll have a convenient bogeyman to assure Bush's re-election.

Think of it as the "Open Roads Initiative" or the "Healthy Choice Plan."

[/satire]

Greenspan is such a partisan hack.

Think for a moment. If the Macs were to take a hit because of economic instability, wouldn't private lenders also take the same hit with the same impact on the economy? How would banks be any different from the Macs? The truth is, the Rethugs are annoyed that the public Macs are horning in on the banking industry and this testimony is just Greenspan floating bogus negative arguements for the Bankers.

What a corrupt hack.