>It's not clear that SS is so huge that investing it in
>private assets
>would affect their price to a great extent.
It wouldn't hurt. But for proof that a privatized SS system is no insulation against a bear market, see this chart of Chilean stock prices: <http://quote.yahoo.com/q?s=^IPSA&d=5y>. The index fell by 60% between 1995 and 1998.
Doug