Maybe we’re lucky that President Bush didn’t get his hands on all the Social Security money just in time to blow it all an extremely over-heated stock market. But not all is lost. Not long after his Social Security privatization scheme went down in flames, President Bush appointed Charles Millard the head of the Pension Benefits Guaranty Corporation. And the former Lehman executive decided to invest a good bit of it into the stock market and real estate. This was back in 2007 and 2008. It’s not clear how much of the funds had been subjected to the new “strategy” before the markets crashed.
That was where things stood before investigators looked at it and saw a suspicion pattern of communications with big investment houses just before Millard piled tons of money into their funds. And now senators are asking for a criminal investigation. Moe Tkacik reports on the latest. And here’s our run-down of the key facts from the draft report of the Inspector General’s audit.
