Another step down the long, slow road to IRA nationalization

The Sovereign Man ^ | 01/31/2015 | Simon Black

[SeekAndFind]

Let’s take a brief walk into financial reality for a moment.

At the time of this writing, the United States government’s official debt is nearly $18.1 trillion.

Now, let’s look at who the biggest owners of that debt are:

1) Taxpayers of the United States.

If you’ve held a job in the Land of the Free, 15.3% of your salary has gone to fund Social Security and Medicare.

Each of these programs holds massive trust funds that are supposed to pay out beneficiaries, both present and future.

Conveniently, the trust funds are required by law to buy US government debt.

And given that every single US taxpayer is an ultimate beneficiary of these trust funds, that ranks the people of the United States as among the biggest holders of US debt.

How sustainable is this? Not very.

The 2014 trustee reports for both Medicare and Social Security indicate that nearly ALL of the trust funds are sliding towards insolvency.

This isn’t some wild conjecture. The people in government who manage these trust funds are flat out telling us that they’re about to go bankrupt.

Let that sink in for a bit… then ask yourself: how long can two insolvent programs continue to be among the largest owners of US government debt?

2) The Federal Reserve

Now that we know Social Security and Medicare cannot continue to buy Treasuries indefinitely, we turn our attention to the Fed, which as of today, holds over $2.4 trillion in US government debt.

The Fed is essentially the lender of first resort to the US government and has singlehandedly managed to mop up the vast majority of government debt over the last several years.

Problem is, the Fed has to print money to do this. And the Fed has created so much money over the last few years that it’s now borderline insolvent.

The Fed’s capital now stands at just 1.27% of its total assets. To be clear, this is a razor thin margin of safety.

No other central bank in the world (except Canada, curiously) would be able to post such a pitiful number and still pretend to be credible.

But make no mistake, there is a level of monetary expansion that’s too far. And the Fed is already getting close to this danger zone.

Bottom line, the Fed is not going to be in a position to write blank checks to the US government indefinitely without becoming insolvent and causing an epic currency crisis.

And when that happens, where else can Uncle Sam go? Who else will buy his debt?

Simple. You.

More specifically, your retirement account.

According to Internal Revenue Service estimates, there’s close to $5 trillion in individual retirement accounts in the Land of the Free.

This is money that taxpayers prudently set aside for retirement, hopefully cognizant that Social Security isn’t going to be there for them.

Devoid of any other easy lender, $5 trillion is far too irresistible for such a heavily indebted government to ignore.

I’ve long warned that the government could easily nationalize a portion of all IRAs.

It would be so simple for them to do– just a single executive order and a couple of phone calls.

They’ll probably wait for some market crash, and then sell it to Americans like this:

“For your own protection, we will henceforth require banks to invest your retirement savings in the safety and the security of US government bonds.”

These bonds, of course, are so safe that they fail to pay an interest rate that even keeps up with inflation, effectively guaranteeing that you’re going to lose money.

It started happening last year.

In his 2014 State of the Union address, President Obama announced his MyRA program.

MyRA is basically an IRA that invests directly in… you guessed it… government bonds.

He pitched it as an easy for Americans to save for retirement “with no risk of losing what you put in”.

Step two came when both the President and Treasury Secretary embarked on a blitzkrieg-style marketing campaign to pump the program, pledging that they would aggressively push businesses to sign up their employees.

Now comes step three.

Find out more in today’s podcast where we talk about the obvious, looming threats to your retirement security, and the structures you can build to do something about it.

http://www.sovereignman.com/podcast/031-another-step-down-the-long-slow-road-to-ira-nationalization-audio-16042/

If you have an IRA, you need to know this.

I’ve also put together a free report about safeguarding your IRA; it’s a scaled down version of a premium report that I sent to our Sovereign Man: Confidential members recently, but it contains a lot of valuable information.

You can download it here:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/sm-cdn/blackpapers/IRA+Report-free.pdf

[Nuc 1.1]

If the government is going to inflate then don’t do it with borrowed money. Just print the stuff and save the interest.

[catnipman]

None of these was a successful confiscation of existing private retirement accounts. The closest was in Hungary, but even there you could keep your account if you gave up Hungarian social security payments, and in Hungary they were trying to confiscate a measly 14 billion, hardly on the same economy-shattering scale of confiscating hundreds of trillions.

The rest of the cases were either cutbacks and/or redirection of public retirement funds similar to our bankrupt social security fund, or failed attempts at private confiscation. Additionally, people had plenty of warning before the attempts were made, in fact, enough warning that all but the Hungarian attempt at private fund confiscation were simply dropped due to political pushback.

[I want the USA back]

The end goal of these people is we own nothing. No money. No car. No house. Everything in the hands of the collectivity. Find out more about communism, cuz this is what we’re getting with 0, pelosi, reid, kerry and the clintons.

[Rusty0604]

Last week the Polish government announced it would transfer to the state (aka. 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.

http://howestreet.com/2013/09/poland-confiscates-private-pensions-yours-are-next/

As far as I know that did happen.

[catnipman]

“As far as I know that did happen”

And exactly how far is that?

The article you posted is two and half years old and says “Last week the Polish government announced ...”

[Rusty0604]

I don’t understand your point. Just because something happened two years ago makes it irreverent?

You had stated that all the European countries had only cut back on public retirement funds, so I posted the link to show that Poland had seized private funds, as I remembered that happening.

“As far as I know that did happen” means that I have not seen any news since that time that they had changed their mind or repaid it, and wondered if you knew something I didn’t.

Apparently you don’t.

[SkyPilot]

While boarding the box cars, they will thank the politicians who say, I am making a small change (confiscating the 401K’s) in order to SAVE SOCIAL SECURITY!

That is EXACTLY what will happen. Mark my words. Why? How many people depend on Social Security vs. those who have properly saved or have a set retirement outside of SS?

Imagine yourself a politician, ask the question, and roll the dice.

Here is how I believe they will get away with it.

The Stock Market is going to CRASH. There is no doubt. Its "gains" since 2008 are fictitious because of $4.5 Trillion transferred in Federal Reserve "Quantitative Easing" fake money.

When everyone's retirement is in jeopardy, then a "solution" will be raised.

[SkyPilot]

A lot of interesting schools of thought. On one hand, some are convinced the market all of our IRA's and 401k's are invested in is so over valued that it is bound to crash in an event that people will talk about for 100 years. So it follows if the government seized all of it they would get essentially nothing because it has no value. However, if the government decided they were going to seize foreign held assets, like buildings, property etc.... and if they decided they were going to focus on Saudi, Kuwaiti, Iraqi, Iran, Cutter, Pakistan, Lybian, Syrian, etc etc .... these foreign held assets.... well, who would be opposed to that? A very small number of people?

You are a wise poster. You see things.

Here is what I believe: the coming crash will be Global, and very, very deep. Seizing IRAs and 401Ks will almost be an afterthought compared to the global seizure. There are still Trillions in retirement savings - in fact - the only place left that government has not stolen. But make no mistake, each IRA and 401K will lost a lot of its value in the coming crash. That is why the governments will get away with issuing "bonds" for your money.

[SkyPilot]

Republicans Sound Alarm on Administration Plan to Seize 401(k)s

Oh good. I feel better already. Republican stood by when Obama issued a "memo" that rewarded the criminal regime in Cuba full diplomatic relations with the United States. The Republicans in Congress did NOTHING when Obama illegally altered the Affordable Care Act 24 times. The Republicans did nothing when Obama destroyed our sovereignty through Amnesty to millions of Illegal Invaders.

The GOP Congress has less power and backbone than Hitler's Reichstag.

[SkyPilot]

The end goal of these people is we own nothing. No money. No car. No house. Everything in the hands of the collectivity.

Gibsmedat!

[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.

[Rusty0604]

That’s correct. When the financial system crashes the gov’t will seize its citizen’s assets because those in power will want to survive at any costs.

If they could just disarm us, it would be easier. But of course, they are militarizing police forces so citizens will be outgunned.

[SkyPilot]

Exactly. No less than Forbes warned back in 2012 this was plan was already underway:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2012/12/29/watch-out-your-401k-is-being-targeted/

[catnipman]

“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”

Of course it’s going to crash, but then what’s the point of “seizing” any paper assets at that point since the crash will have already rendered them worthless? It’d be like seizing wheelbarrow loads of paper currency when the Weimer Republic crashed.

[catnipman]

“I don’t understand your point. Just because something happened two years ago makes it irreverent?”

My point is that as far as you know, NOTHING happened two years ago other than some “announcement”. You posted some blog repost of some blog repost of some tinfoil hat site that claimed two years ago that: “Last week the Polish government announced it would transfer to the state ...”. You’ve never showed what actually happened, if anything, as a consequence of that supposed announcement. You even admitted you don’t know what actually happened. That’s my point.

[abb]

IMO, the easiest way to do this is to means test Social Security, more than it already is.

For example, raise the maximum taxable percentage of SS from 85% to 100%. Once that is accomplished, then proceed to actually CUT SS payments to those who have “other” pension plans or IRA/401k distributions.

The sales pitch will be something like: “Those folks have ‘enough,’ so they don’t ‘need’ Social Security.”

[Rusty0604]

You know it happened, looks like you are looking for someone to pick on today, as far as I know!

You were wrong on your original post, and as far as I know, you just don’t want to admit it!

“Poland’s Piggish Pols—They’re Not Alone”

This story appears in the October 7, 2013 issue of Forbes.

Poland has pulled a destructive stunt worthy of Argentina. It is seizing half of the Polish people’s private retirement funds. All government bonds in these pension-plan portfolios are being forcibly transferred to the government.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2013/09/17/polands-piggish-pols-theyre-not-alone/

[catnipman]

Well, at least you finally made a post that showed what actually happened. BTW, Poland “only” seized their own bonds from the funds, not the entirety of the private retirement funds. Certainly that’s outright theft and bad enough, but still not the same thing as a government like the U.S. simply stealing the entirety of everyone’s personal IRA’s and the like.

[SkyPilot]

Of course it’s going to inevitable economic crash, but then what’s the point of “seizing” any paper assets at that point since the crash will have already rendered them worthless? It’d be like seizing wheelbarrow loads of paper currency when the Weimer Republic crashed.

Good question.

The answer is that this inevitable economic crash will be unprecedented in American and world history. The data adds up: fictitious pumped US Stock Market, European Union phony Bonds, unsustainable Japanese debt and deficits, Chinese Yuan meltdown, commodities implosion, and on and on.

People's IRAs and 401Ks will probably lose half their value, maybe more. I think the US Stock Market will go to 9,000, perhaps lower.

But, that is still a LOT of MONEY that the government will desperately need in the future "Crisis."

What else are they going to do? The Central Banks will not be able to move decimal points on flat screens. Chaos will endure in the inner cities. Ferguson MO will look like a picnic in comparison. Political rhetoric will put Stalin and Mao to shame.

They WILL take your money. Count on it.

[SkyPilot]

The sales pitch will be something like: “Those folks have ‘enough,’ so they don’t ‘need’ Social Security.”

Agreed. That is coming. What I have read, and who I have spoken to, leads me to this conclusion: they are going to merge ALL retirements into a sort of Marxist mixer. They will seize your IRA and 401K and give you a "bond", but that will last only a short while. Any hope of getting Social Security, but more importantly if you are old, Medicare, will be DIRECTLY tied to you submitting.

The plan has been in the works for years now, and they are just about ready to spring the trap.