Government Planning and Efficiency

or "Fox in the Henhouse"  
FDIC bank fund in the red until 2012  Ω 

Even as regulators try to replenish deposit insurance fund, it will be over two years before it boasts a positive balance, warns agency chief.

Translation--We're out of money, and we have no clue when we'll have more.

Why Social Security Will Go Bankrupt Sooner Than People Think Ω 
By Paul B. Matthews 
On May 12, 2009, the trustees for the Social Security system released their annual report, "The 2009 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Federal Disability Insurance Trust Funds."

Following release of this report, many media outlets were quick to report (or should I say regurgitate) the findings sited in the trustee's executive summary -- notably that Social Security payroll tax collections would begin to exceed benefits paid in 2016, a year shorter than had been forecasted in 2008. 

Let Them Go Bankrupt, Soon Ω 

The current House and Senate bills will also break the president's second promise—not to add to the deficit. In part because the health insurance that the administration's plan forces people to buy is expensive, the plan proposes to give individuals large financial subsidies to partially offset the cost.

That the programs will ultimately go bankrupt is clear from the trustees' reports. On pages 201 and 202 of the Medicare report, you will find the conclusive arithmetic: over the next 75 years, Social Security and Medicare will cost an estimated $103.2 trillion, while dedicated taxes and premiums will total only $57.4 trillion. The gap is $45.8 trillion. (All figures are expressed in "present value," a fancy term for "today's dollars.")

Doubling Down on a Flawed Insurance Model Ω

The entitlement-based subsidy, combined with the proposed Medicaid expansion, would add between $700 billon and $1.2 trillion to federal spending over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The new entitlements would come on top of existing federal health-care entitlements that the government has been neither able to control nor finance.
The U.S. Postal Service: Our Next Bankruptcy? Ω
The General Accounting Office (GAO) has announced that the U.S. Postal Service is in danger of financial insolvency.

2009 Federal Deficit Surges to $1.42 Trillion  Ω

WASHINGTON (AP) - What is $1.42 trillion? It's more than the total national debt for the first 200 years of the Republic, more than the entire economy of India, almost as much as Canada's, and more than $4,700 for every man, woman and child in the United States.

The administration estimates that government debt will reach 76.5 percent of gross domestic product - the value of all goods and services produced in the United States - in 2019. It stood at 41 percent of GDP last year. The record was 113 percent of GDP in 1945.
Much of that debt is in foreign hands. China holds the most - more than $800 billion. (--See THIS and THIS.) In all, investors - domestic and foreign - hold close to $8 trillion in what is called publicly held debt. There is another $4.4 trillion in government debt that is not held by investors but owed by the government to itself in the Social Security and other trust funds.

"I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you with your finances."

You poor sap.