This is a test. This is only a test. If this made sense it wouldn’t involve politics. This is ONLY a test.

What is: an operation paying returns to separate investors, not from any actual profits earned by the organization, but from the investors’ own money or money paid by subsequent investors. This may and usually does entice new investors by offering returns other investments can’t guarantee. This return takes the form of short-term returns either abnormally high or unusually consistent. The continuation of the returns a Ponzi scheme advertises and pays requires ever-increasing flows of money from newer investors to keep the scheme going.

– Wikipedia-The Free Encyclopedia paraphrased

Answers: a) Wall Street Investor practices; b) International Monetary Fund Standards of Practice; c) Business as usual in high finance; d) a Ponzi scheme; e) Social Security

For those jaded enough to believe the system (any system) involving high finance is rigged by those who have to assure those who have not continue working at the lower levels of the work/retirement system boondoggle, this is a no brainer. To others we’ll explain some simple ways their government used (for over 70 years) to create that warm and fuzzy feeling known as Government aid and entitlements.

Answers (a, b, and c) are all somewhat true but won’t get you to the next round of JEOPARDY! “D” is a fraudulent investment program used by Bernie Madoff and his slimy ilk to steal the investment capital of people trusting a cobra’s sincerity as they look into its eyes. This is a nefarious crime outlawed in the 1920s after being born decades before in England and referenced by Charles Dickens in his works. It’s illegal. It’s a crime for preying on people seeking only to ensure a quality retirement. It’s punishable by law and Bernie Madoff is sentenced to prison for more years than he has left to live barring leniency by some moron in the judicial system, or oval office, pardoning him.

“E” is the federal Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) program. The original Social Security Act of 1935 and current version of the act encompasses several social welfare and social insurance programs. (Wikipedia) This attempt at insuring the retirement programs of elders was voluntary with payroll deductions paid into a fund to accrue interest and allow pay-outs when a person reached the mandated retirement age. Each generation paid in and expected to draw their benefits from a well storing the accumulated money from the subsequent parties paying in over generations. In other words the young pay in to have their money paid out to their parents and grandparents. Sound familiar? Make sense?

Good. So what’s this stuff about Social Security being a Ponzi scheme and why don’t people agree that it either is or isn’t? The definitions are almost equivalent and in alignment with each other. The drive is to see dividends pay the contributors from available cash in the fund. But the fund no longer holds cash. It holds government bonds issued by, and based on, the good character and integrity of the United States of America. This character and integrity is defined by the members of Congress and the Presidency incumbent at any particular moment.

No wonder the danged thing is approaching bankruptcy. The “good character and integrity of the Congress”?  ROFLMAO! These are the same people immune from Insider Trading Statutes by their own acts of Congress. They skirt the law by writing law favorable to themselves. (Don’t you wish you could do this?)

Ponzi Schemes are defined as criminal in Federal Statutes and prohibited by law. Social Security is defined as legal in Federal Statutes and acceptable because it was codified by a group of legislators (politically motivated opportunists) arguably describable as being of elastic character and malleable integrity.

So who benefits from this? Congress and the President. They advertise their devotion to you and your retirement while historically burdening the Social Security system like a road-kill camel in the Mojave.

Who keeps hammering on your last nerve to protect this program from the “other” plunderers stealing votes based on the issue?

It sure isn’t the American people needing it most.

Thanks for listening.