The latest idea from Donald Trump, the GOP Presidential candidate and self-proclaimed “king of debt,” would have devastating effects on the Social Security Trust Fund. While we could write pages on the Treasury bond market, federal debt and the Social Security Trust fund, chances are you wouldn’t want to read it, so instead, here is a quick summary of the issue.
Starting first with The Donald’s plan to run the U.S. government like one of his failing casinos. He described it on CNN:
“If we can buy back government debt at a discount — in other words, if interest rates go up and we can buy bonds back at a discount — if we are liquid enough as a country we should do that. … People said I want to go and buy debt, and default on debt. These people are crazy. This is the United States government. First of all, you never have to default because you print the money, I hate to tell you, OK? So there’s never a default. … I’m the king of debt. I understand debt better than probably anybody. I know how to deal with debt very well. I love debt. But, you know, debt is tricky, and it’s dangerous; you have to be careful, and you have to know what you’re doing.”
Both the Motley Fool and The Economist have raised red flags on what this strategy would actually mean for the Social Security Trust Fund — which has $2.79 trillion invested in Treasury notes that Trump is apparently willing to devalue.
“Debt issued by the U.S. government is done so with the ‘full faith and credit’ of the United States. To consider allowing U.S. debt to get into a situation that incites a crash in bond prices would probably undermine the high quality ratings bestowed on U.S. debt and raise major red flags in the U.S. stock market and in markets around the world that look to the U.S. as a rock-solid financial leader.
The single largest holder of U.S. debt is the Social Security Trust, which held 16% of outstanding national debt at the end of Q1 2013. Other federal programs holding U.S. debt include the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust, military retirement fund, and federal civil-service retirement and disability fund. If Trump were to consider buying back debt at a discount it would potentially reduce the investment value of the Social Security Trust, which generally invests its cash reserves in extremely safe, interest-bearing U.S. Treasury notes. Doing so could wind up hurting current and future retirees who depend on this key federal program.”
The Economist reminds us this approach is what got Greece into so much fiscal hot water:
“The idea, it seems, would be to get creditors {editor’s note: in the case of the Social Security Trust Fund that’s seniors, the disabled and survivors} to accept less than 100 cents on the dollar. This happens with corporate bankruptcies; if the market price has fallen to 60 cents on the dollar, and been snapped up by specialist hedge funds, then redeeming the debt at 70 cents on the dollar may be a good deal. Emerging economies have done the same in the past when they have fallen on hard times; it happened in Greece.
But with Treasury bonds, investors expect to get 100 cents on the dollar. It is the risk-free asset that underpins the entire global financial system. A forced deal, of course, would count as a default. Treasury bonds are at the heart of the financial system. Banks use them as collateral for loans; insurance companies hold them as reserves; pension funds own then to fund retirement benefits; mutual funds own them as well. Any default within the system would have cataclysmic consequences for the economy that would far outweigh any gains in refinancing costs. To cap it all, the Federal Reserve owns almost $2.5 trillion of Treasury bonds and the Social Security Fund some $2.8 trillion. So the government would, in part, be defaulting to itself.
In short, this seems like a completely nonsensical idea. Do you think it is possible that Mr Trump didn’t think it through and just said the first words that came into his head? Couldn’t be.”
The takeaway from all of this is that Donald Trump’s claims that he’ll “leave Social Security alone” is an empty promise because, if his debt plan becomes reality, the Social Security Trust will lose years of solvency and the billions of dollars contributed to the Trust Fund by American workers will actually be worth only pennies on the dollar.