Mystery regarding the Social Security system and how long and if it will pay retirees benefits is nothing new. Now a book, promising to “expose the truth” about the Social Security trust fund, is shrouded in its own mystery.
The book’s author, Allen W. Smith, an economist, says his book about the trust fund was pulled from shelves “mysteriously” in 2004, after he publicly criticized Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve (1987-2006).
The book, The Looting of Social Security: How The Government is Draining America’s Retirement Accounts, will be republished Dec. 1. It will “expose the truth about the Social Security trust fund,” according to the book’s publisher, Ironwood Publications.
Smith says that he appeared on CNBC on Feb. 26, 2004, to respond to Greenspan, who had called for Social Security benefit cuts one day earlier, according to a statement on the book’s release.
Smith held his book in front of him as he said the following: “Alan Greenspan should be ashamed of himself for what he is not telling the American people.”
The author says the public criticism of Greenspan led to action against the book, although he doesn’t explain who was responsible for the alleged actions.
“A few weeks after Smith’s controversial appearance on CNBC,” according to the statement from Ironwood Publications, “the book mysteriously disappeared from bookstores, nationwide, and was listed as ‘unavailable’ by Amazon.com. Smith’s publisher refused to revert the publishing rights back to the author, so Smith could not legally publish the book elsewhere. Smith finally regained the rights in 2008, and he thinks the book is urgently needed today to combat the misinformation that is being spread about Social Security.”
Before its disappearance, the book received good reviews. The Boston Globe said, “With dismal clarity, Smith lays out the step-by-step history of how a national pension plan was transformed into an outright shakedown of working people.” The ALA Booklist said, “Smith has written a scathing account of massive fraud on the part of our nation’s leaders, who have plundered every cent of the Social Security Trust Fund surplus that was specifically earmarked for the retirement of the baby boomers.”
Smith has added an afterword to make the book more timely.
Books always struggle to meet the pre-publication hype. This book is no different. Only time will tell if it’s worth reading or if whoever pulled it six years ago was doing us all a favor.
Social Security book’s history as mysterious as program’s future via IFAwebnews.com .
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