Thieves and Deadbeats

In this Reuters photo taken today, G-dub holds one of the bonds that makes up the Soc Security trust fund.

He then proceeded to tell the crowd that the Soc Security trust fund doesn't exist and that US Treasury bonds are "worthless IOUs".

In response to the President's assertion, Josh Marshall asks some very good questions.

• Foreigners hold quite a bit of US debt. What are theirs worth? Are they going to get their money paid back?
  

• Wealthy Americans do too. In fact, most of President Bush's personal wealth ($5 to 10 million worth) is in the form of US government debt. Is he going to get his money paid back?
  

• He wants to borrow $5 trillion more. Are those folks going to get paid back?
  
  

• During his Presidency he's run up enormous deficits while at the same time taking hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars in Soc Security Surplus (more than $150 BILLION, last year alone) to fund his tax cuts. So has his administration stuck the Soc Security Admin with what he knew was worthless paper?

As Josh correctly notes, and as I've written about here many times, that is what this is really about. They have taken 1.7 TRILLION DOLLARS on Soc Security surplus from us in the form of tax cuts to them, and with the time approaching to pay that money back, they don't want to. They want to default and borrow TRILLIONS more.

And just what would happen to our economy if foreign investors actually took that idiot seriously and stopped buying our debt. It is no secret that China and Japan are the largest purchasers of our debt. In fact, countries like China us dollars purchased in the form of Treasury bills as if it were gold to give their currency value. What would happen if they switched to Euros?