[StBernard] FEDERAL MUTUAL FUND

[Westley Annis]

Federal Mutual Fund


The Bear on May 13 2010 at 7:40 am | Filed under: Budget, Culture, Economy
Government Retirement: Democrats have obliquely admitted they covet
Americans' pensions. Last week, congressional Republicans told them to stay
away. The shame is that they had to do anything at all.

The first rumblings were heard in the 1990s, when Democrats were said to be
coming after our retirement accounts. Back then, the warnings were easy to
pass off as hyperbole or a cranky conspiracy theory. Today, they pass as
prescient.

In January, Bloomberg reported 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."

Alarms went off. In February, former House Speaker New Gingrich and policy
analyst Peter Ferrara warned in our "On The Right" column that "Washington
is developing plans for your retirement savings."

"The idea," they said, "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. . 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."

Last week, Connie Hair wrote the following in Human Events about the Annual
Report of the White House Task Force on the Middle Class released in
February:

"The radical solution most favored by Big Labor is the seizure of private
401(k) plans for government disbursement - which lets them off the hook for
their collapsing retirement scheme. And, of course, the Obama administration
is eager to accommodate their buddies."

Hair says a "backdoor bull's-eye is on your 401(k) plan and trillions of
dollars the government would control through seizure, regulation and federal
disbursement of mandatory retirement accounts."

Republican lawmakers are taking the threat seriously. They have expressed to
the administration through a letter their "strong opposition to any proposal
to eliminate or federalize private-sector defined contribution pension
plans."

Read more from IBD Editorials

SideBear: HANDS OFF!!! or the Democrats will see the revolution that they
have been begging for.

There is another wrinkle that I have heard discussed, when Joe Average
American passes away the assets left in the pension funds become the
property of the government. Forget estate taxes they want the whole damn
thing!