This Story Has Been Around For A While–I Don’t Know If It Is True

World Net Daily has been reporting on this story for about two years. I have no doubt that the policy they have been reporting on is something that the Obama Administration would like to do, I am just not sure that they will try it.

Here is the story:

Two years ago, as WND reported, the Obama administration was proceeding with a novel way to finance trillion-dollar budget deficits by forcing IRA and 401(k) holders to buy Treasury bonds by mandating the placement of government-structured annuities in their retirement accounts.

Remarkably, those financial professionals specializing in private retirement savings and the U.S. citizens investing in private retirement plans now face the possibility the Obama administration and its allies on the political left will impose rules and regulations that effectively abolish the private retirement savings and investment markets.

This would definitely redistribute wealth–it would take it away from everyone.

The article further reports:

With the issuance of the White House 256-page Budget Proposal for Fiscal Year 2013, the Obama administration endorsed “Automatic IRAs,” a plan introduced into Congress in 2010 by Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass, and Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., in which private companies would be automatically enrolled into government-mandated IRAs, forcing those businesses to contribute on behalf of their employees a “default amount” equal to 3 percent of an employees pay, unless an employee specifically opts out of the plan.

The FY 2013 Budget proposal notes that currently 78 million working Americans, roughly half of the work force, lack employer-based retirement plans.

Argentina has already taken over private retirement plans. This plan has not been successful in solving Argentina’s problems:

Writing in the London Telegraph in October 2008, business and economics editor Ambrose Evans-Pritchard warned that G7 nations, including the United States, may begin following the path of Argentina in forcing privately managed pension funds to be invested in government-issued debt.

In 2008, Argentine sovereign debt was trading at 29 cents on the dollar, reflecting the devalued state of the Argentine peso, with the result that private pensioners holding government debt in their retirement accounts could not be assured those bonds would have any meaningful value at maturity

What the government is planning here is called stealing. Privately managed pension funds are not government property.  Meanwhile, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is moving to require the government to create government-mandated worker retirement accounts as an entitlement program, with the possibility that a portion of all private retirement funds could be forced into U.S. Treasury debt. I am not against encouraging companies to set up some sort of retirement savings programs for their employees, but these programs need to be private programs designed in a way that does not put undue burdens on private companies. At the rate Congress makes decisions, Social Security will not be there for today’s workers, and even a Christmas-Club type savings plan (remember Christmas Clubs ?) would be a step in the right direction. However, a government takeover is never a good idea.

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