Watch Your IRA's and 401k's

The Fed is calling for hearings on Sept. 14-15, 2010 to see if they would like to confiscate some of our pension plans. The hearings are being conducted by U. S. Department of Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA).  Of course, they won't use the "confiscate" term so they use the term " lifetime income options for retirement plans".

I had read a few months ago that this was going to be an option put forth, but I blew it off as it just didn't seem possible. To me it seemed to much of a "tin-foil hat" kind of thing. I said to myself, "who in their right mind would turn over some or all of their retirement monies to the government?" Well after seeing this article and the term they used, "lifetime income options for retirement plans", I can see them putting a "spin" on this that the sheeple will buy into.

Remember that there is almost $6 trillion of assests in IRA's and 401k's at the end of 2008, according to The Investment Company Institute. Of course the government could not just come and confiscate our funds, well they could but they won't as that would lead to quite a rebellion. What I would guess they will do is try and take a little at a time, over time. They may start small and "require us" or we would "volunteer" to buy into some sort of government run pension plan or government annuity. CONgress would then pass a bill that the amount we would have to own would increase over time until the government would be the sole provider of pension plans (let's call it govpension). These plans would have the employer take a certain amount, let's say 3% of our pay, and put it into this govpension. If we wanted to save 10% of our income then we could invest the other 7% wherever we want. Over time though the employers will be required to take more and more until the government has what they need, as this will become just another slushfund!

Don't think this can happen? Well look at your paycheck. The government already mandates your employer to withhold FICA taxes, Social Security, etc. In fact, wasn't Social Security originally set up to be our "retirement program?" See The term, in everyday speech, is used to refer only to the benefits for retirement, disability, survivorship, and death.  What happens to all the money you have invested into the govpension when you die...the same thing that happens now to your SS benefits when you die...the government keeps most of them, not your family.

This isn't new, look at this article from NASDAQ in January 2010...Obama Administration Mulls Creating Retirement-Savings Bond . Here are some quotes from the article in case you don't want to read it all.

Representatives of the financial-services industry have remained neutral on President Obama's proposal to mandate payroll-deposit Individual Retirement Accounts for workers, but many support the idea of a federal retirement bond as a low-cost investment product. The industry has proposed that the U.S. Treasury Department manage the retirement bonds, similar to the way the agency manages Treasury savings bonds.

President Obama proposed creation of an auto-IRA system in his fiscal-2010 budget, but it lacked specifies regarding how the system would be structured.

Can you imagine what kind of mis-management there would be with this GIGANTIC slushfund for CONgress to have access to!!

People, we need to watch this meeting closely as we may be losing what little we have saved. If this goes through, whatever the shape or form it takes, you can bet it won't be in the interest of "we the people."