The Much Forgotten Actuarial Nightmare

I post this up top because 60 Minutes did a bang up job interviewing Controller General David Walker of the GAO back in 2007. If you want to skip to the two most important parts of this clip try going to 4:50. Walker points out that Medicare is 5 times more problematic and economically irresponsible than Social Security. Yet everyone talks about how expensive Social Security is, and why we can't afford it (read the boomers). Ever noticed how no one seems to talk about Medicare being expensive?

Well Walker noticed and he points out the actuarial nightmare that we are currently living in and points out how even if you paint our current situation with unlikely scenarios like we invest trillions in T-Bond at the current bond rates we still probably won't make it. It actually makes me a little sick to my stomach. The irresponsibility is terribly rampant right now. I might mention, that ineptitude and lack of leadership have been the key issues. I personally feel we have had a brain drain at the top since the mid 90's.

This video is now in All Star status for us bloggers. It is right up there with the Santelli rant. It now seems so sage like yet we are really only a couple of years into his prediction. In reality the boomers start to turn 65 this year and next year.

How dire was his pre-retirement predictions? Walker really did say that the impending doom really was the unraveling of the Republic, did he not?

You see, sometimes, I think that we in this life, have the problem of not taking things seriously enough. We are used to flipping on the tele' and watching American Idol, and America's Got Talent, and Two and a Half Men. We laugh, we drink beer and we pretend this all is not happening. Yet in the same way the sun tucks below the horizon light disappears in the most numbing moments.

You see the real truth is that our dollar is being destructed currently, and debt is being accumulated. It is hard to think back, but it has only been a couple of months since the horrendous healthcare bill passed.