Social Security is fine. This is all corporate media hype to serve the financial institutions that want to privatize social security. DON'T FALL FOR IT!

PORT WASHINGTON, N.Y. (MarketWatch) -- Reports that the Social Security system will soon run out of money have been greatly exaggerated.

As sure as day follows night, the annual report from the board of trustees of the OASDI fund (Old Age Survivors and Disability Insurance otherwise known as Social Security) has brought forth alarms that the fund will run out of money in the not-too-distant future.

Although flush with cash now and over at least the next 10 years, the Social Security system is expected to gradually begin paying out more in benefits than it takes in from payroll taxes with the result that by 2041 its assets, in the words of the trustees, will be exhausted.

For those who look at only the summary page, this conclusion is nothing new. Indeed, the trustees have come to the same conclusion every year -- the only exception being the year the fund is expected to run dry.

In 2000, the system's actuaries thought the assets of this fund would be exhausted by 2032. Two years later it was 2037. Now the projected exhaustion date is 2041.

Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office, which makes these projections as well, recently thought the system will remain solvent until at least 2052.

Me, I don't make these projections personally, but I would like to point out that this year, as has been the case every year in the past, the actuaries have made and released not one but three projections. They call them low cost, intermediate and high cost.

The projection that has provoked these alarms is the intermediate projection. This reflects the trustees' consensus views regarding such inputs as economic growth, productivity, inflation, earnings, employment and interest rates.

Judging by past history, assumptions underlying the intermediate projection are very conservative -- especially when it comes to economic growth. And as you might imagine, the speed at which the economy grows has a lot to do with the other variables -- including the interest the fund earns from investing its surplus in Treasuries.

The intermediate projection assumes that the economy will grow by an annual rate of 2.3% per year between now and 2085. This may be higher than the 1.9% per year that was projected as recently as three years ago, but it is still well below the 3.4% that the economy grew on average between 1960 and 2005.

The actuaries' own low cost projection assumes an average annual growth rate of 2.9% between now and 2085. This is higher than the 2.3% pace embodied in the intermediate projection, but it is still well below the 3.4% average of the past.

Guess what? Under the actuaries' low cost projection, the Social Security system never runs out of money!

That said, you might ask the question why this more realistic projection has escaped politicians from both major parties.

I don't know why, but I can only theorize that it's because they haven't taken the time to read the entire report, which is available on the system's website. Here's the link.

If you go beyond the highlights section to the projections section, you will see exactly what I mean.

In other words -- if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Irwin Kellner is chief economist for MarketWatch and for Capital One Bank.

I've been straining my brain trying to figure out why we're involved. Now it's all clear.

America's true reason for intervention, and missile attacks against Libya has become very clear today with a sudden creation by the rebels of a new central bank on March 29th.

The rebels in Libya are in the middle of a life or death civil war and Moammar Gadhafi is still in power and yet somehow the Libyan rebels have had enough time to establish a new Central Bank of Libya and form a new national oil company.  Perhaps when this conflict is over those rebels can become time management consultants.  They sure do get a lot done.  What a skilled bunch of rebels - they can fight a war during the day and draw up a new central bank and a new national oil company at night without any outside help whatsoever.  If only the rest of us were so versatile!  But isn't forming a central bank something that could be done after the civil war is over?  According to Bloomberg, the Transitional National Council has "designated the Central Bank of Benghazi as a monetary authority competent in monetary policies in Libya and the appointment of a governor to the Central Bank of Libya, with a temporary headquarters in Benghazi." – The Economic Collapse via Uruknet

Libya has been one of the last nations in the world that had its own state run banking system, and control over its own money supply.  By having this system in place, they could demand oil purchases from their oil fields to be made in Lybyan Dinar, and not the US Dollar.  It also means that Libya has ensured themselves a stable economy, with little inflation and currency devaluing as most of the industrialized world has under private central banks.
The parallels for both European and US intervention now in Libya is very reminiscent to why the United States attacked Iraq in 2003.  Six months before the US moved into Iraq to take down Saddam Hussein, the oil nation had made the move to accept Euro's instead of dollars for oil, and this became a threat to the global dominance of the dollar as the reserve currency, and its dominion as the petrodollar.

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The American people were given the lie that there were weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and that there were Al Quida training bases in the Arab state, both of which were proven to be false.  No, these were false flags given by the government to try to justify a punishment on Iraq for moving away from dollars as payment for oil.
To be able to create a new central bank under the blueprint that is used by Western powers in less than two weeks by the rebels gives vast credence that the rebellion itself in Libya was initiated by outside forces, and not over demands by the citizens of Libya for social reform.  This plan was put in place by the world's game changers who want complete global control over oil and economic systems.
It did not take long before we discovered the real reason why America chose to intervene and attack Libya, and not any of the other nations in the Middle East that are going through internal rebellion.  The rebels creation of a central bank, coupled with the United Nations report two days ago that there would be no sanctions on the selling of oil by the rebels who control certain fields and refineries, proves that this war is not about human rights, but about punishment for a nation that refused to give up its sovereignty to the global banking and oil cabals.

The Daily Show - Fox News False Statements
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Politifact needs to be fact checked

Politifact says that jon stewart was wrong when he said that faux news viewers were consistently misinformed and faux news' glenn beck jumped on it and posted it on his page as proof that liberals lie and faux viewers are actually geniuses.. unfortunately for politifact, the study organizers wrote to them and said:
Steven Kull, the director of WorldPublicOpinion.org, wrote us after the story appeared to say that testing for lack of knowledge is not enough. "We analyzed the effect of increased exposure to news outlets. We found that with all other outlets, increased exposure generally resulted in less misinformation. However, for Fox viewers, on nine points of information, increased exposure correlated with increased misinformation. This was true of only one point of information for public broadcasting and MSNBC viewers, and two points of information for network news. This effect was found in the 2003 study as well. Fox viewers were the only group for whom increased exposure resulted in greater misinformation."
which blew politifact's analyses out of the water.
i wrote to politifact and made a few points myself that cannot be denied.  i put in links so that you can check for my veracity yourselves, if you are interested in seeing how much dumber faux viewers are than the rest of us.
here is my (edited) letter:
"first off, i don't know why you mentioned o'reilly and hannity.  Jon said Fox viewers, not viewers of individual shows.  so that whole analysis is for nothing.
Secondly, every one of those polls and studies show Fox viewers as being the most misinformed.  I don't know how you can read them any other way.  For every question asked they were CONSISTENTLY wrong.  The answer, whether you like it or not, is yes or no.  They got the answers wrong.  My question is, did you write up this assessment or did Fox news make up a fake page to, again, misinform it's viewers?
in both studies you posted from University of Maryland, One of the Maryland studies actually said, and politifact ignored:
"There were however a number of cases where greater exposure to a news source increased misinformation on a specific issue.   Those who watched Fox News almost daily were significantly more likely than those who never watched it to believe that:
 most economists estimate the stimulus caused job losses (12 points more likely)  most economists have estimated the health care law will worsen the deficit (31 points)  the economy is getting worse (26 points)  most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring (30 points)  the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts (14 points)  their own income taxes have gone up (14 points)  the auto bailout only occurred under Obama (13 points)  when TARP came up for a vote most Republicans opposed it (12 points)   and that it is not clear that Obama was born in the United States (31 points)"
how did you just ignore this in your assessment?
and according to this pew poll:
http://tinyurl.com/3wvb5rk
how can you say that fox is within the national average.  did you even look at the polls or studies?
it says that 35% of fox viewers are misinformed.  that's not the "average" as you say.  That's next to the bottom of the list.  only "on line news" comes in lower.
in the 2008 survey you reference,
http://people-press.org/2008/08/17/news-interest-and-knowledge/
in their "education, age and knowledge" section, Fox is again at the rock bottom of the list.  they say the national average on that string of data is "18".  how can it be 18 when it starts as a low of 18 and only moves up from there?  fox is at the bottom of that list.
I tune to you to get the truth but this time you really blew it.  You need to reevaluate this analysis.
You are so far off on this it's hard to take you seriously anymore.  If you have ever watched fox you will hear them giving misinformation as you watch.  There is no doubt that they lie to their viewers in order to pass on an Obama/liberal hating agenda that is based on lies.  I'm very disappointed in you.