[catnipman]

I think the government WOULD perform such a seizure if they could figure out how to do it without crashing the economy, but they haven’t yet figured out how to do that.

The problem with such a seizure, is that unless it was all secretly pre-planned in massive detail such that on one late Friday afternoon the dictator President announced freezing all IRAs, 401(b)s, 403(b)s and all other plans, the normal process of legislative authorization and its lengthy debate would give plenty of time for everyone to sell out of their retirement accounts, biting the bullet of paying the maximum tax rate incurred from emptying the accounts in a single year. Such a scenario in which everyone attempted to exit at the same time would crash the financial systems and the economy and do it in such a way recovery would be nearly impossible.

Even the above mentioned freeze would itself crash the economy. After all, the government itself couldn’t exactly sell off those trillions overnight in order to convert them to government bonds without crashing the economy either. Heck, they couldn’t even do that over the course of several years. Not to mention the chaos in the markets due to the massive uncertainty such a seizure would cause, meaning the seized assets would become suddenly worthless. And finally, such a seizure would leave millions destitute and lead to massive numbers of lawsuits, adding more chaos and uncertainty.

So the paranoid scenario of sudden retirement account seizure by the government has a probability that approaches zero.

[kjam22]

Yeah... it sounds like Dem leaders wanting to raise cap gain taxes on retirement style accounts and the Republicans fighting against it. So the Dems float some idea that “we’ll just nationalize those” etc. Its a threat designed to get tax increases. That’s what I think. It’ll probably work at some level.

[Thank You Rush]

“”for everyone to sell out of their retirement accounts””

How many people have sole control of their accounts?

[KarlInOhio]

I think the most likely scenario is to require a small percentage, lets say 10%, of new 401k and IRA deposits to be put into "safe" government bonds. Although some will gripe online or even write their Congressmen about it most will just accept it. Some will even praise it. After that "succeeds" the amount will be boosted to 25%. The will gradually raise this until all new deposits go to the government and at no point will the step be so big that crowds will take to the streets or the market will crash.

You have an entire capital city full of frog boilers and the are getting the pot of cold water and the stove ready for individual retirement accounts. Obama slipped when he thought that free community colleges would balance the loss of tax savings on new 529 deposits. He won't repeat that mistake.

[Rusty0604]

European nations begin seizing private pensions

http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/The-Adam-Smith-Institute-Blog/2011/0102/European-nations-begin-seizing-private-pensions

[SkyPilot]

Such a scenario in which everyone attempted to exit at the same time would crash the financial systems and the economy and do it in such a way recovery would be nearly impossible.

You don't get it. The economic system will crash. It is coming. The day of reckoning cannot be put off much longer.

Seizing the IRAs and 401Ks will be easy when the "crisis" is here.