by David Walker in The Daily Reckoning
Social Security is in trouble. According to the Social Security Trustees Report, the Social Security program was in a $7.7 trillion hole as of January 1, 2009. That means Washington would have needed $7.7 trillion on that date, invested at prevailing rates, to deliver for the next seventy-five-years on the promises that the federal government has made. But we actually need much more than that to keep Social Security healthy, because it will experience larger and larger deficits both in the near future and beyond the seventy-five-year accounting horizon.
As of January 1, 2009, that number – the amount we would need to invest to ensure the sustainability of the program for seventy-five years and beyond – was $15.1 trillion. How much of this huge sum do we have invested in real liquid and transferable assets today – that is, how much in actual money? Zero, zip, cero, nada, nothing!
(Click on bold headline for complete story)
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