The American Prospect makes an interesting pair of contrasts in its Social Security package this month: first, from Norma Cohen, that Britain’s privatization schemes have backfired in a big way due to exactly the sort of “price-indexed” benefit cuts that Bush has proposed and due to overly greedy securities brokers (are there any other kinds?); and second, from Dean Baker, that Argentina’s partial privatization and the new public debt it incurred played a significant role in driving that country towards default and fiscal ruin.

Baker says, “[t]he United States is obviously very different from Argentina.” Yeah: we’re running even larger deficits.