On May 30, 2005, Charles E. Rounds, Jr. published the attached article: "The Fiction of Social Security Bonds." On July 12, 2011, President Obama said he could not guarantee that retirees would receive their Social Security checks August 11, 2011 should Democrats and Republicans fail to reach an agreement on raising the debt ceiling. If nothing else, the President's pronouncement serves as an official confirmation that Social Security Bonds are a legal fiction without economic value, that the Social Security Trust Fund has always been unfunded.