Members of Congress are openly talking about taking control of privately owned 401(k)’s and replacing the funds with government debt. All for our own good, of course. The truth is that no large pool of capital is safe from the federal government. The laughably named Social Security “trust fund” has already been looted and replenished with government IOU’s, and the feds have taken over the healthcare industry in order to get their filthy mitts on the vast reservoir of insurance premiums.
Although the article quoted below talks about the Obama administration casting its greedy eyes on retirement accounts, keep in mind that this is not about Obama. It’s about a federal leviathan that scoops up private wealth wherever and however it can. Whoever happens to be occupying the Oval Office at the moment matters not.
The Obama administration is “taking the first steps to confiscate retirement dollars,” according to Dr. Jerome Corsi who predicts that the end result will be retirees with 401(k) plans holding near-worthless government debt “that will be paid off in a devalued currency worth … pennies on the dollar.”
The move to confiscate those retirement dollars for government purposes was best illustrated by Christina Kirchner, President of Argentina, in 2008 when she announced plans to seize her citizens’ private pension funds. Writers at the Heritage Foundation said that while Kirchner claimed such seizure was necessary to protect her citizens’ investment accounts from the global meltdown, “most observers believe[d] her real motive [was] to use the $30 billion in seized assets to ease the massive debt obligations her leftist spendthrift government [had] run up.” The Wall Street Journal agreed, saying that “taking over the … pension fund assets [would] ease the cash crunch faced by [her] government.”
Corsi said he has a letter from the Treasury Department, Bureau of Public Debt, informing U.S. citizens that the federal government is rolling out a new program called “Treasury Direct” that will allow citizens “to purchase, manage, and redeem…savings bonds” electronically, as well as offering an option to purchase such bonds automatically through payroll savings or a personal checking account. This happened to coincide nicely, according to Corsi, with a bill offered by Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) to create “Automatic IRAs” that would require all employers and employees to invest in IRAs using that automatic deduction option, “whether they want to do so or not.”
Read more at the New American.
These people better be careful or they’re going to reap a whirlwind they cannot imagine.
Utter nonsense. NO ONE in the federal government is talking about seizing the money in our retirement accounts. I happen to have over half of my net worth in a 401(k) and a Roth IRA, and I would be damned angry if such talk was being bandied about by people in the government. But it’s not. It’s only being bandied about by conspiracy theorists on the internet.
I do fear that the country I love is gradually going down the drain. Not because of our big bad “socialistic” government, but because of the willingness of so many people to believe utter BS like what presented in this article.
Use your damn brains people!
Here’s more on the subject:
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=36823
To say that “no one in the federal government is talking about seizing the money in our retirement accounts” is to argue against reality:
Vice President Joe Biden floated the idea, called “Guaranteed Retirement Accounts” (GRAs), in the February “Middle Class” report.
“In conjunction with the report’s release, the Obama administration jointly issued through the Departments of Labor and Treasury a “Request for Information” regarding the “annuitization” of 401(k) plans through “Lifetime Income Options” in the form of a notice to the public of proposed issuance of rules and regulations. (pdf)”
House republicans headed by John Boehner issued a statement that included this:
“Preserving Employee-Controlled 401(k)s. Some in Washington are proposing to wipe out 401(k)s entirely, replacing them with government-run accounts that put bureaucrats – instead of families – in charge of Americans’ savings. House Republicans are committed to preserving 401(k)s – and just as importantly, preserving workers’ ability to make their own decisions about their retirement savings. The Savings Recovery Act reflects this important principle.”
The statement may be read in its entirety here:
http://gopleader.gov/savings/solutions.htm
So to say that no one the federal government is talking about this matter is just plain wrong.
In fact, this news is somewhat old. People in the federal government have been talking about seizing control of retirement accounts for at least a couple of years. Here’s part of an article from a 2008 issue of U.S. News:
I hate to use the “S” word, but the American government would never do something as, well, socialist as seize private pension funds, right? This is exactly what cash-strapped Argentina just did in the name of protecting workers’ retirement accounts (Efharisto, Fausta’s Blog). Now, even Uncle Sam isn’t that stupid, but some Democrats might try something almost as loopy: kill 401(k) plans.
House Democrats recently invited Teresa Ghilarducci, a professor at the New School of Social Research, to testify before a subcommittee on her idea to eliminate the preferential tax treatment of the popular retirement plans. In place of 401(k) plans, she would have workers transfer their dough into government-created “guaranteed retirement accounts” for every worker. The government would deposit $600 (inflation indexed) every year into the GRAs. Each worker would also have to save 5 percent of pay into the accounts, to which the government would pay a measly 3 percent return. Rep. Jim McDermott, a Democrat from Washington and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee’s Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, said that since “the savings rate isn’t going up for the investment of $80 billion [in 401(k) tax breaks], we have to start to think about whether or not we want to continue to invest that $80 billion for a policy that’s not generating what we now say it should.”
The article may be read in its entirety here:
http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/capital-commerce/2008/10/23/would-obama-dems-kill-401k-plans.html
This could be reality with a progressive party that has no problem overreaching for powers they were never given by the constitution,THIS is exactly why WE have to protect our founding documents any which way we can.. DONT BE LIKE JEFF….DONT BE ONE OF THE SHEEPLE
I guess that Jeff thinks that the warning from the IMF Official warning the US and Japan about our Debt is a conspiracy theory also. Ok, so the Main Stream Media failed to mention it… so we will give Jeffy a break and suggest he find new news sources. Just google it.
Skepticism is understandable. Who wants to believe that one’s government is actively and aggressively antagonistic towards the people it presumes to rule? Especially here in the U.S., we are thoroughly conditioned to believe that we have a representative government that acts in the interest of the people. Finally seeing the truth is a jolting paradigm shift.