This isn't new but it's something I never thought about until a few years ago. I was doing work for a couple guys and learned what little bit I know from their shop talk over drinks. These guys were financial officers. One for a mid-level, manufacturing corporation and the other for a large public utility. Their jobs were to manage pools of money that didn't technically belong to their employers but they had control of for brief periods of time. Obviously, the corporation's overall goal was to make a profit and the utility's goal was to break as close to even as possible but these guy's job was the same: Maximize the earnings of these temporarily held pools of money. The guy who worked for the corporation made more than the guy who worked for the utility even though he managed far smaller pools of funds. I guess if you figure potential pensions and job security they broke about even. I'll say one thing. I liked these guys but they both made more than you would ever expect. To do business with they had a kind of ingrained, unintentional dishonesty. They'd "presbyterian" they hell outta ya if you let them and never blink an eye. They were ingrained with this idea that material success was evidence of divine blessing. If that were true a guy like Trump should be president. Oh, wait a minute.
Gawd! I'm boring myself. I never said these guys were interesting. Anyway, it turns out you can, park, loan, invest these larger amounts of money for periods as short as 12 hours, maybe less. Whatta I know. Money, like rust, never sleeps. Neither does coffee. At every step of this process someone has a finger in this flow of cash. This flow of cash underlies the entire economy. A good analogy is the way tectonic plates float on a liquid field of constantly moving molten stone. What happened in 2008 is, for various reasons, this liquid flow all but stopped and the plates above collided with analogous result.
So, where does this money come from? Mostly, monthly payments of one type or another. Insurance premiums, car payments, consumer loan payments, credit card payments, mortgage payments, utility payments. All of this money has to be held against committed disbursements for a time and it is all subject to being employed for short term profit. There's other sources. Personal and family fortunes, pre disbursement corporate profits. Corporate reserves even savings accounts, retirement accounts, pension funds. There's a lot of it and it's all subject to legitimate management and profit. Cool. It's when regulation fails we have a problem. 2008 again.
There is another class of these payments that bears close watching. Payroll taxes, property taxes (school taxes) social security taxes. These are vast pools of public funds that are constantly subjected to attempts at exploitation. Just because it's understandable doesn't make it a good idea. Just because it's a bad idea doesn't necessarily make it an evil idea but it is greatly to our benefit for the "full faith and credit of the United States" to actually mean something. Social Security has a much better record of reliability than Wall Street. If the day comes it doesn't we've got a real problem.
In the case of Social Security a lot has been made of the Government borrowing these funds for operating costs. When you consider the second largest expense we face on a yearly basis is the cost of federal borrowing you gotta wonder where we would borrow money at no interest and no penalty. ( Defense : 611 billion. Debt service: 292 billion. Federal deficit: about 410 billion).
If you want to know how bad an idea the "voucher" movement is all you need to do is look at the scandalous record of the for-profit higher education racket. These people have had access to the treasury for years and have amassed a record that would make Don Corleone blush. We now know what type of system David Koresh, Jim Jones or Jerry Falwell would create. Bad Ju-Ju. Somebody tell this Devos person.
I don't know about you but I'm ready for a nap. Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my public funds to keep.
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