White House Looking to Creep Into 401(k)s

EDIT:: Almost forgot, Mods! Thanks for helping make my threads appear
and format kinda uniform, and push this travesty wherever you please.

If anyone wonders why a certain style of socialist takeover is called
'Fabyan Creep', the Old Grey Lady will give us a simple example.

Evidently the doomsayers who said our Federal Crew was about to
glom onto our retirement nest eggs weren't too far off. By imposing
proposed new regulations on how a broker or second party could
invest your money (yes, it's still technically your money), the government
could also potentially tell the investor how and/or where he could invest.

An understatement from Jon Trugman: "It also opens a huge can of worms."

/s This article to me personally is maybe an echoed complaint from the herd
that the Federal Government is beginning to regulate too much. /macrosarc end

A chop out from the nypost.com article--

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and President Obama during his Feb. 23 speech to AARP. (Getty Images)

Last Monday, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) at his side,
President Obama attacked Wall Street, again, for essentially
helping in what the federal government and businesses can
no longer provide — a decent retirement.

Under the false pretense of calling for new and tougher so-called
fiduciary standards for financial brokers, advisers and retirement
plan representatives, the White House once again horned in on
Wall Street’s compensation formulas.

However, what the president surely knows is that a vast majority
of retirement plans — IRAs and 401(k)s — are in simple fee-based
products like mutual funds. The commission-based accounts are
for those who prefer to direct their brokers in certain purchases
inside some of their retirement products.

The key to the White House’s interference is in its nuanced language.
(LATER ON...)

The administration surely knows that commission rates and fees
on Wall Street have never been better for the consumer, and to
pretend to be able to offer even cheaper rates seems disingenuous.
It also opens a huge can of worms.

(FINALLY)
Come on, IRAs and 401(k)s are the few savings products that
actually do work in this country for everyone. IRAs and 401(k)s
are personal retirement accounts, not government pensions.
Please keep your hand out of our pockets.

And of course for those versed in finance for the high, and a
stronger stomach for abuse than I am presently able to summon:

Source

This picture of Fearless Leader at the podium invokes another visual
of a joke that begs to ask,
"How many commissars does it take to screw in a light bulb?"
And I can't help but wonder if all pf them combined would finish
the job-- because it's safer for them to screw us in the dark.

I feel another round of BrokeJack Mountain coming on; and an
exam glove on the bouquet rinsed in cheap bourbon.
What say ye, staunch and unsurprised members of ATS??

Time to clear and cancel the 401 i only get one percent out of my check not much in there but im tierd of the government sticking its sticky ass hand into my pockets!!! Ahhh its so infuriating...

This chalupa is making me start to miss Bush.

Really wish he would stop it..

He really makes bush look like a school girl...a reply to: Irishhaf

I wonder what would happen if I were to try to dip into Obama's or Sen. Warren's 401k... or whatever they have. I'm willing to bet they would be having non of that. I also wonder what would happen if I tried to tax Obama's paycheck to buy myself a new TV... I'd also bet that'd never happen.

originally posted by: Irishhaf
This chalupa is making me start to miss Bush.

Really wish he would stop it..

"... and you're working for no-one but meeee..TAX-MAN"
George Harrison, opener for 'Revolver'. That may
be the only Beatles album George got to start. Woof.

What I miss is a short lull between insults to our combined
intelligence, like they think the dog is so fried he can't feel
the juice coming through the grate anymore. twitch. Slump

All I can say is I can see the border of Venezuela from here

originally posted by: EternalSolace
I wonder what would happen if I were to try to dip into Obama's or Sen. Warren's 401k... or whatever they have. I'm willing to bet they would be having non of that. I also wonder what would happen if I tried to tax Obama's paycheck to buy myself a new TV... I'd also bet that'd never happen.

A fine line from somewhere else---
"It'll be a great day when the schools automatically get all
the money they need to operate properly; and the Pentagon
has to run a bake sale in order to buy a bomber."
You gotta love it.
The Feds are running out of veins to drain.. we're PRUNES.

a reply to: derfreebie

He has so much to do and so little time.

OBAMA killed the pipeline, seized the Internet & cut off your ammo in just ONE WEEK!

Investment watch

You know because government at all levels has done such a bang-up job managing pensions and the Social Security fund ...

Leave our savings alone. I know you see trillions of dollars there that you can't get your mitts on, but it's OUR money.

And people wonder why we hate the government and all it stands for sometimes. You try to do the right thing and they come in a destroy it as quickly as they can.

LOL like really hard. The banks and corporations and Wall Street have been creeping our 401Ks for at least two decades, if not three. First kill all pensions and get people to put all their money in 401Ks and then rob those. Ask those of us who lost over 80% in 2008.

Blaming the White House and Obama for this now is pretty f*cking ignorant. Congress is just a Wall Street arm, and this is happening at the state level too. But enjoy your floundering.

a reply to: ~Lucidity

And when you take it out and stuff it in your mattress and they come for that too?

What will your excuse be then?

I guess we should all just give up and let the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-benevolent state live our lives for us.

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: ~Lucidity

And when you take it out and stuff it in your mattress and they come for that too?

What will your excuse be then?

I guess we should all just give up and let the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-benevolent state live our lives for us.

I was just stating the facts.

I don't need excuses. Project much?

And why do you guess that we should all just give up and let the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-benevolent state live our lives for us.

Attempting to put words in my mouth? Fail.

a reply to: ~Lucidity

That's the sentiment I get out of your remarks.

You expect them to save us.

I expect that anytime I save in such a manner as a 401(K), there will be risks. This is why I manage it as much as I can so that some of my money is in safer investments. You might have lost 80%. We didn't lose nearly as much because we weren't that exposed.

And, of course, none of that addresses the huge elephant in the room that you can't simply put some in a standard savings and expect take in even a modest interest rate return because the Fed (read big government monetary) has been keeping the rates artificially low. If it weren't for that monetary policy, you could also keep a reasonable amount of retirement nest age tucked away in CDs and other things and expect to turn some modest increase there.

But right now, until that changes we are pretty much stuck with the market and keeping our eyes in it. Still it does better than anything government manages.

a reply to: derfreebie

I found the other parts of the article more informative... the focus on 401k..&..IRA was very thin

someone interested in the soon-to-come IRA + 401k seizures can find more meat about the subject using their search I think the POST just pushed this piece to keep from eating-the-dust of the leaders in exposing gov't underhandedness and shennaigans

a reply to: derfreebie

Our government is always trying find ways to pick our pockets of our hard earned money. They double and triple tax us and raise taxes every time they get the chance. What's sad, is it's done by the people who we elect into office who are supposed to represent us, the people!!! Yet even when these same politicians continue to pass legislation to legally pick our pockets, we continue to vote them back in!

a reply to: St Udio

Indeed the Post was late to the party; and as far as their
nuanced language goes, it seems like there's more to this than
just regulating cream-skimming... which would be almost impossible
to substantiate anyway.

I believe they were just putting out a small time alarm about legally
'restructuring' our investments into something more 'appropriate'--
like a nice, safe low yield Treasury(ies) ROFL.
Then the Fed can go to the casino too, and with a lot bigger wad.

Same old commie MO, different Sunday...

a reply to: WeRpeons

Maybe some day that Skinner-ian cracked record of reelecting
the same goombas will get frisbeed into the can... but for right
now the Obama administration is like a kid in a candy store for
unconstitutional mischief!
It's almost like a bad prophecy coming in for the daily double.

Oh wait, call that the Infecta... we've got a reminder from
Business Watch about Obama *shutting down the Internet,
*Criminalizing .223 ammo and *then my TSA/amnesty, Master/
Blaster sewn together and spit out head's swimmin'. INA WEEK.

Can I come back and edit this when I finally get a handle on what's
been scratched onto his HoneyDooDoo List for February ?

"There are times when more happens in one month than in
one hundred years." Vladimir Lenin. That explains everything.
I honest to Glob lost track of it all. Help we're surrounded by
criminals with financing... and THEY'RE ALL CRIMINALS.

I might be tempted today -- especially after the Pubs caved--
to change that sig to "Vote Purple Gang---- Or Else"

EDIT:: And before I get buried in speaker drawings, I have to thank
everybody who came and beyotched with me about this, forget
the bumps on my noggin. This is starting to point toward that
obvious ALL of them vs. us thing, and how long will it take the
rest of us out there to get it?

a reply to: Irishhaf

Thanks for comin', and this guy is only a
dry taco with our lettuce in it.
The Administration is in dire need of an adjustment.

a reply to: derfreebie

The notion of "confiscating" 401K's in exchange for a government pension was raised rather early in his administration by an economist, outside of the admin, but it was propped such that it was clearly an administration trial balloon.

Recently, the President talked about "idle assets" (can't find the exact quote) - money and investments that the government could tax (seize) and "do stuff with" as though money invested in 401K's is just sitting in lock-boxes, moldering away.

There was also the trial balloon of making 529 earnings taxable (contributions are already after-tax - the only tax-free part of 529's is the gains earned, provided the distributions are spent on qualified expenses - I think people think the contributions aren't taxable, which is incorrect.)

There are many signals coming out of the admin that the government wants more revenue, a *lot* more revenue - and a lot more dependence, too. With Social Security and Medicare facing long-term bankruptcy, the easiest thing to do to "solve" those programs will be to do precisely what was said in the first instance - seize your retirement savings, and issue you an IOU (and if you die before you collect, well, too bad.) The 1% don't have enough assets to cover the amount of money the government wants (and are ultimately the people that prop up the political class, so they're protected, anyway.)

No, they're coming for "middle-class" assets - under the pretext of protecting those poor victims who made mistakes in their 401K's - kind of like the pretext of seizing control of content on the internet was to protect those poor victims whose Netflix streams were slow. the seizing of the student loan industry was because private companies were making too much money, and seizing control of the healthcare system was because "poor people lacked healthcare" (when in reality, the reason was that healthy people weren't buying health insurance; the poor already had Medicaid which typically provides much better benefits than my expensive employer-sponsored plan.)

I've already learned the hard way it's pretty foolish to save for things, like college for your kids or retirement. They'll take what you saved, and then some, to pay for those that didn't.


I don't truly think it's their intent - but doesn't matter, the effect will the same - our country is being divided into a 80/19.5/0.5 percent society - 80 percent dependent- and subsistence-class, 19.5 percent bureaucrats and intelligentsia, and the 0.5 percent political class.

See also: 1984

You people that continue to vote for this kind of thing? 10, 20 years from now, just stop, look around the ant hill you live in, the suffocating life you live, free from want, free from ambition, free of choices, and remember, you wanted that.