Dirt Simple

I see today that the Federal Reserve has stepped in to start buying commercial paper, and this seems to be garnering some cautious praise in the financial community. By offering to step in to the role traditionally played by money market funds, the Fed is not only trying to prevent a seizing of the broader economy, but to inspire confidence in the traditional players to get back in the game again.

This direct entry of the Fed into the market got me to thinking. Wouldn’t this be a great time to start a Social Security investment fund? I’ve written before about how the Social Security “trust fund” isn’t a true trust fund. It holds only U.S. Treasuries, and is really just a theoretical promise–more accounting gimmickry than trust fund. I contrasted this to the Canada Pension Plan Investment Fund which is a true segregated trust fund, managed by an investment board with a mandate to invest and grow the premiums of plan contributors.

I’m just spitballin’ here, as they say, but with stocks trading at fire sale prices, wouldn’t this be an opportune time to turn the Social Security trust fund into a real, honest-to-goodness trust fund for the benefit all Americans now paying into it, and who face the very real possibility that they may never see a dime from it? The trust fund could start taking the billions of dollars that Americans pay in premiums and investing them in American businesses to prop up this flagging economy, instead of playing the current con game wherein the government borrows from the public pension to finance whatever money-burning gambit it happens to be on at the moment.

But then again, this is probably just crazy talk. Why invest in yourself when you can just mortgage the country to China?