Today at The Virtual Summit: The Fed Prints Money, Social Security Is Real Money and Video Smackdown!

Today at the Virtual Summit on Fiscal and Economic Responsibility for People Who Did Not Wreck the Economy [1] hosted by Campaign for America's Future...

Yes, The Fed Can Print Money: Economist Dean Baker explains to the deficit hysterics that just this week the Fed was able to reduce the deficit by giving money it printed to the Treasury. [2]

...the Fed is now printing large amounts of money and can print more to support the government's deficit during this downturn. The government does not need to raise taxes or cut spending to pay for programs like unemployment benefits or aid to state to and local education. It can simply print money.

While in principle there is a limit to its ability to print money, that would only come after the economy was back near full employment and further increases in demand threatened to cause inflation. However, the economy is nowhere near this point today.

Yes, Social Security Is Real Money: Kim Wright debunks the claims from Social Security opponents [3] that there is no real money in the Social Security trust fund:

...the American people have been bombarded with a steady stream of pronouncements that Social Security is bankrupt, broken, or just too expensive. In truth, what these folks really mean is that they don’t Washington to honor its obligations to the Social Security trust fund...

...According to the 2009 Social Security Trustees report, $2.6 billion in annual surpluses have been collected since 1983 in anticipation of baby boomers’ retirement. Last year alone, workers contributed $137 billion more to Social Security than was paid out in benefits. That’s real money contributed by real workers, no matter how Social Security’s foes claim otherwise.

Yes, The Peterson Foundation Is Ideological: Finally, in the video above, I challenge the claims chief deficit hysteric Peterson Foundation CEO David Walker [4], and his responses prove he and the rest of the Pete Peterson posse are not objective truth-tellers, but blind ideologues.