[StBernard] Obama wants your 401K

[Westley Annis]

Before reading the below story...remember how outraged the Democratic Party
members of Congress got when George W. Bush made the suggestion just a few
short years ago of giving each individual person the choice to invest only
5% of the Social Security into the private (stock) market?  Now, this Obama
clown wants to raid your entire retirment...but he'll give it back to you
some day!  Considering the track record of success the federal government
has, do you believe him and the Democrats?  Do you trust them.
 
My belief is this another part of Obama's plan to destroy this nation and
its economy.  How?  Think about it...Obama and the Democrats force you to
let them play with your retirement account, then they go "ooops, we made
some bad decisions..sorry, but we lost all your money...guess you'll have to
depend on us (the government) from here on."   See how it works?
 
Look at everything Obama is doing - it's all geared to getting you to have
to depend on the government.  That's how he and the Democrats carry out
their plan of everybody having to depend on party elitists running the
government.
 
Remember the old joke about "how does a politician say f*%k you?"..."Trust
me."

________________________________

THIS IS WHAT I'VE BEEN SAYING!
Social Security is going bankrupt and our treaury is selling US bonds to
finance huge debt.  The Chinese have no further use for our bonds so, the
federal reserve is now buying them with our money.  This is a recipe for
disaster.  Now Obama wants to take your retirement funds (invested in
private sector equities or bonds) and sell treasuries to you to offset the
deficits. His idea is to take your pension and retirement savings from tax
deferred accounts, and give you an IOU for some income from the government.
Knowing they're broke, would you give them your money in exchange for an
IOU? 
 
When health care reform and cap&tax are defeated, other frightening
political offerings will be coming from this crazy administration (amnetsy,
retirement theft).  They want it all - and will continue to bring change
after change until there is nothing left.  The 2010 political elections are
the most important in my lifetime.  Read the article below and see if you
agree with me.  This was written by a Dem, by the way.
.

Thursday, March 4, 2010


Demand that Congress Pass the "Keep Your Hands Off My 401(k) Act of 2010"
<http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/03/demand-that-congress-pass-keep-your.
html>  





As I wrote
<http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/01/flashback-will-obama-seize-americans
.html>  in January:

	Last May, I wrote
<http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/05/will-obama-seize-americans-401k-and-
ira.html>  about the rumor that the Obama administration might seize funds
from American's 401k and IRA accounts.

	Last week, Bloomberg pointed out
<http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20603037&sid=aHFCE999fWR0> :

		The Obama administration is weighing how the government can
encourage workers to turn their savings into guaranteed income streams
following a collapse in retiree accounts when the stock market plunged.

		The U.S. Treasury and Labor Departments will ask for public
comment as soon as next week on ways to promote the conversion of 401(k)
savings and Individual Retirement Accounts into annuities or other steady
payment streams, according to Assistant Labor Secretary Phyllis C. Borzi and
Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Mark Iwry, who are spearheading the
effort...

		There is "a tremendous amount of interest in the White
House" in retirement-security initiatives, Borzi, who heads the Labor
Department's Employee Benefits Security Administration, said in an
interview.

		In addition to annuities, the inquiry will cover other
approaches to guaranteeing income, including longevity insurance that would
provide an income stream for retirees living beyond a certain age, she said.

		"There's been a fair amount of discussion in the literature
taking the view that perhaps there ought to be more lifetime income," Iwry,
a senior adviser to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, said in an
interview...

		One proposal raised by Iwry as co-author of a paper while at
the Retirement Security Project, before joining the administration, has
reached Congress. A bill requiring employers to report 401(k) savings both
as an account balance and as a stream of income based on an annuity was
introduced on Dec. 3 by Senators Jeff Bingaman, a New Mexico Democrat,
Johnny Isakson, a Georgia Republican, and Herb Kohl, a Wisconsin Democrat.

	

I quoted Karl Denninger's warning that a government "option" for investing
retirement funds in treasuries could soon become mandatory.

A couple of weeks ago, Newt Gingrich (yes, that Newt Gingrich) wrote
<http://www.aei.org/article/101672> :


	Washington is developing plans for your retirement savings.

	BusinessWeek reports that the Treasury and Labor departments are
asking for public comment on "the conversion of 401(k) savings and
Individual Retirement Accounts into annuities or other steady payment
streams."

	In plain English, the idea is for the government to take your
retirement savings in return for a promise to pay you some monthly benefit
in your retirement years.

	They will tell you that you are "investing" your money in U.S.
Treasury bonds. But they will use your money immediately to pay for their
unprecedented trillion-dollar budget deficits, leaving nothing to back up
their political promises, just as they have raided the Social Security trust
funds.

	This "conversion" may start out as an optional choice, though you
are already free to buy Treasury bonds whenever you want. But as Karl
Denninger of the Market Ticker Web site reports: " "Choices' have a funny
way of turning into mandates, and this looks to me like a raw admission that
Treasury knows it will not be able to sell its debt in the open market--so
they will effectively tax you by forcing your "retirement' money to buy
them."

	Moreover, benefits based on Treasury bond interest rates may be
woefully inadequate compensation for your years of savings. As Denninger
adds, "What's even worse is that the government has intentionally suppressed
Treasury yields during this crisis (and will keep doing so by various means,
including manipulating the CPI inflation index) so as to guarantee that you
lose over time compared to actual purchasing power."

	This proposal follows hearings held last fall by House Education and
Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-Calif., and Rep. Jim McDermott,
D-Wash., of the Ways and Means Committee focusing on "redirecting (IRA and
401 k) tax breaks to a new system of guaranteed retirement accounts to which
all workers would be obliged to contribute," as reported by
InvestmentNews.com.

	The hearings examined a proposal from professor Teresa Ghilarducci
of the New School for Social Research in New York to give all workers "a
$600 annual inflation-adjusted subsidy from the U.S. government" in return
for requiring workers "to invest 5% of their pay into a guaranteed
retirement account administered by the Social Security Administration."

	Argentina provided a precedent in 2008, taking over that country's
private retirement accounts for forced investment in government bonds to
cover spiraling deficits. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard editorialized at the time
in Britain's Daily Telegraph that this may be "a foretaste of what may
happen across the world as governments discover . . . that the bond markets
are unwilling to plug the (deficit) gap. . . . My fear is that governments
in the U.S., Britain and Europe will display similar reflexes."...

	Congressional Republicans should introduce legislation to block the
government from ever proceeding with anything like this. Call it the "Keep
Your Hands Off My 401(k) Act of 2010."

Gingrich's article - like Gingrich himself - is highly partisan. He has
helped create a false partisan divide-and-conquer strategy in this country,
distracting people from realizing that we are all Americans. And instead of
admitting that both the Republican and Democratic parties are just two
branches of the fat cat party (and that both promote socialism for the rich
<http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/10/capitalism-socialism-fascism-or.html

> ), Gingrich pretends that only the Democrats are socialists.


So is this just partisan fearmongering, or is Gingrich raising authentic
concerns about retirement savings?

I don't know. But it doesn't matter.

Specifically, there is no harm - and tremendous benefit - to outlawing
extremely dangerous acts, even if no one is positive they will be committed.
If no one is going to carry out such acts, then no harm no foul. If they
are, it will help to clarify that such acts are illegal and will be harshly
punished.

If government agents don't carry out false flag attacks, then they shouldn't
hesitate to sign a pledge that they won't carry out false flag attacks
<http://www.pledgeforamerica.com/> , right?

Similarly, if some in government aren't really considering seizing
retirement savings, then they shouldn't oppose the "Keep Your Hands Off My
401(k) Act of 2010". Right?

These are not the type of acts concerning which expensive regulation would
minimize a small harm. False flag attacks have huge negative costs
<http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/02/governments-from-around-world-admit.
html> , as would the government seizing our retirement savings. And the cost
of saying Keep Your Hands Off My 401(k) would not be expensive, because it
would not involve monitoring against a large number of small infractions,
but simply making one big bad act illegal.

Gingrich might be a partisan hack who is writing about this for strictly
partisan reasons. But his idea is such a good one, that both Democrats and
Republicans should jump on board.

Note: 99% of the Democrats in Congress and the White House are political
hacks as well. I am not trying to cheer-lead for the Dems. Both parties have
sold their souls to the powers-that-be.