Protect Me!
22 June 2007
Ms. Clara Perez
www.democracyjournal.org
Dear Ms. Perez:
Thanks for your e-mail alerting me to Presidential-hopeful John Edwards's proposal to create "a regulatory commission to protect consumers from dangerous financial products."
If such a commission does its job, I suggest that the first dangerous financial product that it attacks be Social Security. Not only are Social Security's returns lousy; not only does the institution providing it have no sound plan to keep it solvent; not only does this institution intentionally mislead its clients about its insolvency (witness its discussions of the illusory "trust fund") - but its "customers" are forced to buy it. THAT is a dangerous financial product!
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Ms. Clara Perez
www.democracyjournal.org
Dear Ms. Perez:
Thanks for your e-mail alerting me to Presidential-hopeful John Edwards's proposal to create "a regulatory commission to protect consumers from dangerous financial products."
If such a commission does its job, I suggest that the first dangerous financial product that it attacks be Social Security. Not only are Social Security's returns lousy; not only does the institution providing it have no sound plan to keep it solvent; not only does this institution intentionally mislead its clients about its insolvency (witness its discussions of the illusory "trust fund") - but its "customers" are forced to buy it. THAT is a dangerous financial product!
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Posted by Don Boudreaux on
Thursday January 31, 2008 at 11:25am