Proposal to privatize Social Security rears its ugly head again

Despite two major stock market crashes since 2000, the idea of privatizing Social Security is creeping back into public debate via the presidential campaign.

By Michael Hiltzik
August 21, 2012, 6:06 p.m.

Ghosts have nothing on some of the ideas that come out of Washington when it comes to rattling chains and knocking pictures off the wall to terrify the common people.

Case in point: the privatization of Social Security.

One would have thought that this proposal was done in by two major stock market crashes since 2000, not to mention the generally noisome odor arising from almost everything that Wall Street has touched in recent years.