Posted on 09/06/2013 12:09:52 PM PDT by Rusty0604
While the world was glued to the developments in the Mediterranean in the past week, Poland took a page straight out of Rahm Emanuel's playbook and in order to not let a crisis go to waste, announced quietly that it would transfer to the state - i.e., confiscate - the bulk of assets owned by the country's private pension funds (many of them owned by such foreign firms as PIMCO parent Allianz, AXA, Generali, ING and Aviva), without offering any compensation. In effect, the state just nationalized roughly half of the private sector pension fund assets, although it had a more politically correct name for it: pension overhaul. Catastrophic consequences for fund flows aside, the Polish prime minister had a prompt canned response: "We believe that, apart from the positive consequence of this decision for public debt, pensions will also be safer."
You see, he is from the government, and he is confiscating the pensions to make them safer. Confiscation is Safety and all that...
(Excerpt) Read more at zerohedge.com ...
And borrow and spend they will. If our government confiscated every penny in 401k's we'd still be 15 trillion in debt and then some.
Well, we are already forced in to buying healthcare. Why not something like this too.
This report links to both Reuters and Wall Street Journal - and google searches show many more
Sounds like a done deal to me....
Forced selling of stocks? Who will be the forced buyer? Will the corporations themselves be forced to buy them back? What about the corporations' own capital projects that depend on these stocks for cash? Will the government force the stoppage of capital programs because the companies can't afford them anymore if they are forced to buy back their common stocks?
-PJ
John Roberts will just call it a tax. So it's all good.
So is Biden going to pass out lots of cash to fill their freezers for their votes for war?
Sorry posted to wrong article.
And yes...it sure does look like this is a change in progress unless some action is taken to stop it.
I could understand how Poland might take debt instruments since they were already insured by the government, but the Reuters article said that it was just a matter of time until the personally-owned equity portions of the pensions were seized as well.
Wow. A big step back for freedom in Europe.
Previous proposals were to allow already held equities, and all future purchases would be treasuries. They say it is not safe to invest your retirement in stocks, it’s only safe to invest in the gov’t.
Forced healthcare, forced pension plans, taxes up the wazoo, extortion fees, it never ends. That’s the underlying reason for amnesty: there you have millions of folks who are doing just fine on the black market. Its not about them, its about YOU not getting the wiseacre idea to join them.
It was done in Argentina. Then when the people needed to collect a distribution they were told it had been spent on other things.
“Argentina is rolling out a major economic stimulus plan, using pension and treasury funds to provide nearly cost-free housing loans of up to $77,000 each to 400,000 people who have been closed out of private-sector borrowing.”
http://survivalandprosperity.com/2012/06/13/argentina-plans-on-using-nationalized-pension-funds-for-new-stimulus-program/
“Portugal Confiscates Private Pension Funds Can It Happen in the United States?”
http://ncrenegade.com/editorial/portugal-confiscates-private-pension-funds-can-it-happen-in-the-united-states/
“Hungary Follows Argentina in Pension-Fund Ultimatum, `Nightmare’ for Some” http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-25/hungary-follows-argentina-in-pension-fund-ultimatum-nightmare-for-some.html
-PJ
Yeah. It would seem that they are nationalizing industry AND seizing pensions. Our beloved uniparty has a technical term to describe that sort of thing:
A two-fer.
“And borrow and spend they will. If our government confiscated every penny in 401k’s we’d still be 15 trillion in debt and then some.”
Even if they could pay everything off, they would not be able to stop spending or even pull back on it and it would be like a “fresh start” for these as$clowns and they would think, “oh we can spend Billions more than what we have this week because out deficit would only be in the Billions, heck, it used to be in the trillions.”
Indeed. Poles may hate Communism, but they seem willing to swallow Progressivism, which is just "communism-lite." Indeed, the whole world is moving in that direction. I'm not optimistic about the USA either.
When this happeneds its war
Larry Summers is that you?/s
Agreed. Mandatory investments in government bonds have the same effect as a seizure of assets without the same political uproar as “we just took your 401K, here’s your Social Security Version 2 statement”.
There’s a reason why they’re called retirement SCHEMES.
>>>Indeed. Poles may hate Communism, but they seem willing to swallow Progressivism, which is just “communism-lite.” Indeed, the whole world is moving in that direction. I’m not optimistic about the USA either.<<<
Poland is actually striped and there are plenty of red color present. There are a lot of commies, commie-lite, progressives and liberal types.
The reality is that Soviets has stayed in the nations housing predominately leftist populations after WWII. There were plenty of opposition in Poland and Czechoslovakia but the majority has supported communist puppets, even in these countries. If you don’t believe this idea, mind the fact that Russians also ‘liberated’ Finland, Yugoslavia and Austria, but none in these nations has bought communism (or at least Soviet version in case of Yugoslavia). Soviets weren’t actually very pushy and left in peace.
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