There’s so much bad news coming out of Washington, D.C. that it’s hard to keep up. Now they’re coming for your 401k account:
Jan. 8 (Bloomberg) — 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.
It sounds innocent, doesn’t it? They care so much about us that they want to make sure our 401k accounts don’t lose money. How nice that we have the state to protect our retirement.
There literally isn’t enough money in the world to float the T-notes the Treasury must issue in order to prop up our unsustainable spending path. There are, however, about $3.6 trillion in funds just sitting in 401(k) accounts. If the government can urge–or force–you to convert your 401(k) into T-note funded annuities, the Treasury can continue to issue those notes to float the government’s deficit. Essentially, you’ll be converting your retirement funds into an IOU from the government…just like your social security account has already done.
This will allow the Treasury to keep borrowing money–from your retirement–in order to keep issuing more debt that they may or may not be able to pay back to you.
The altruist-collectivists in power just cannot stand that there is $3.6 trillion out there being controlled and consumed by individuals for their own selfish interest. They want that money. They want total power over every person from cradle to grave. They want you dependent on government for your retirement money.
They expect, as they always do, that Americans will fail to think in principle — not a bad bet. They hope people will fail to see this change to annuities, a complicated financial matter, as the first step toward government control of all retirement funds.
Those who speak out against this plan will be smeared as fringe nutjobs and probably motivated by racism, since Obama is black. But speak out we must because this plan is just the thin edge of the wedge.
To paraphrase from The Simpsons, this must have been in that early draft of the constitution with the word “suckers” in it.
I take deep offense at the title of this article, which implies that those on the left are rubbing their neurons together, making synaptic connections, in a word, thinking. I have seen no evidence of such activity. None whatsoever.
Point taken, Rob.