Your retirement account...belongs to Uncle Sam...too bad for you...

[billc]

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/02/the_feds_want_your_retirement_accounts.html

Quietly, behind the scenes, the groundwork is being laid for federal government confiscation of tax-deferred retirement accounts such as IRAs. Slowly, the cat is being let out of the bag.
Last January 18th, in a little noticed interview of Richard Cordray, acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Bloomberg reported "[t]he U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau [CFPB] is weighing whether it should take on a role in helping Americans manage the $19.4 trillion they have put into retirement savings, a move that would be the agency's first foray into consumer investments." That thought generates some skepticism, as aptly expressed by the Richard Terrell cartoon published by American Thinker.

Yes...from past performance the U.S. government should definitely be the one managing your private retirement account...don't you agree?

2) What will the CFPB do with your money? The CFPB incursion into individual personal savings, in order to control how you invest your money, isn't a new idea. Current proposals grew from a policy analysis as disclosed by Roger Hedgecock.

On Nov. 20, 2007, Theresa Ghilarducci, professor of economic policy analysis at the New School for Social Research in New York, presented a paper proposing that the feds eliminate the tax deferral for private retirement accounts, confiscate the balance of those accounts, give each worker a $600 annual "contribution," assess a mandatory savings tax on every worker and guarantee a 3 percent rate of return on the newly titled "Guaranteed Retirement Accounts," or GRAs.


​

How would that be accomplished? The Carolina Journal reported Ghilarducci's 2008 testimony to Nancy Pelosi's House.

Democrats in the U.S. House have been conducting hearings on proposals to confiscate workers' personal retirement accounts "including 401(k)s and IRAs" and convert them to accounts managed by the Social Security Administration.

Your Government universal GRA investment savings account is an annuity managed by Social Security. Hedgecock noted '[m]ake no mistake here: Obama is after your retirement money. The "annuities" will "invest" not in the familiar packages of bond and stock mutual funds but in the Treasury debt!'

​

By 2010 Bloomberg published an article titled "US Government Takes Two More Steps Toward Nationalization of Private Retirement Account Assets." In that article Patrick Heller observed that, with Democrat control of Congress and the Presidency:

n mid-September 2010 the Departments of Labor and Treasury held hearings on the next step toward achieving Ghilarducci's goals. The stated purpose was to require all private plans to offer retirees an option to elect an annuity. The "behind-the-scenes" purpose for this step was to get people used to the idea that the retirement assets they had accumulated would no longer be part of their estate when they died.
​

So the Government would get the money, not the estate or family of the people who saved the money during a lifetime of work. That's a one hundred percent death tax on savings. Worse, the most responsible and poorest families will be penalized.
Democrats had a blueprint for diverting people's savings from private investment to government debt. Then in 2010 the Tea Party won the house...
3) Why should the Government intervene in people's savings decisions? The justifications for Government intervention in private financial decisions are varied. Panic over the economy, Wall Street, mandating savings equity, eliminating investment risk, financial crisis losses, retirement security, much-needed oversight, your 401K becomes a 201K, shoddy financial products, and predatory investment bankers are just a few.