Retirement Gamble

This email letter was written to New York Times columnist, Herb Krugman, commenting about his column of Feb 4th titled Retirement Gamble.

Mr. Krugman-

I agree with your column that Mr. Bush is leading America down a dangerous financial path. But, let's face it, his past, personal business success, or rather lack of it, has shown he does not understand how to handle money.

There are two points on this subject that I do not see anyone answering. First, how much larger a government will be created and cost to handle and oversee this "privatization?" It won't happen by itself. Secondly, as anyone who has invested in the market knows, there will be fees by the government "contracted brokers." Who is going to pay this? If the individual account holder has to pay them, then your return will be smaller by that amount. If the government is going to absorb them, then there goes the deficit even higher.

The biggest winners are going to be the brokerage houses and individuals who will be handling the trillions of dollars involved. Their fees and commissions are going to be astronomical. And let's face it, those leaders of industry that have stock option plans are going to hit a windfall when their stock prices rise due to the addition of all those monies into the stock market pool. That's who Mr. Bush is really paying back with this plan.