Friday, October 15, 2010

Government Prepares to Seize Private Pension Funds

Massive wealth confiscation program would replace 401(k) system with Social Security-run ponzi scheme

Government Prepares To Seize Private Pensions 111108top2

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, October 12, 2010

The government is preparing to seize the private 401(k) pensions of millions of Americans while enforcing an additional 5 per cent payroll tax as part of a new bailout program that will empower the Social Security Administration to redistribute pension funds in a frightening example of big government gone wild.

Public pension plans have been so aggressively looted already by the government that cities and counties face a $574 billion funding gap, according to a CNBC report.



That black hole is set to be filled by a new proposal that will “fairly” distribute taxpayer-funded pensions to everyone, by confiscating the private wealth of millions of Americans. Its proponents express staggering arrogance in thinking that they can just steal money people have worked for decades to accrue as if it’s their own.

Not only would the government confiscate 401(k) pensions, it would also impose a mandatory 5 per cent payroll tax payable by everyone, according to a hearing chaired last week by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.

“This would, of course, be a sister government ponzi scheme working in tandem with Social Security, the primary purpose being to give big government politicians additional taxpayer funds to raid to pay for their out-of-control spending,” writes Connie Hair.

The hearing was a platform for advocates of Guaranteed Retirement Accounts (GRAs), a program authored by Teresa Ghilarducci, professor of economic policy analysis at the New School for Social Research in New York. Back in November 2008, Ghilarducci testified to Congress that 401(k)s and IRAs should be confiscated and converted into universal Guaranteed Retirement Accounts (GRAs) managed by the Social Security Administration.

“You don’t hold hearings on something you don’t intend to do,” points out the Market Ticker blog. “I hate it when I’m right. I hate it even more when tens of millions of Americans are going to get reamed to pay for the crimes of the handful on Wall Street, and their crony enablers in Washington DC.”

As Bloomberg reported earlier this year, pension funds are already being taken by stealth and invested in failed banks.

The GRAs would be enforced by means of a mandatory savings tax equating to 5 per cent of an individual’s annual paycheck deposited to the GRA. Social Security and Medicare taxes would still be payable, employers would no longer would be able to write off their contributions and capital gains would be taxable year-on-year. In addition, workers could bequeath only half of their account balances to their heirs, unlike full balances from existing 401(k) and IRA accounts.

During a Seattle radio interview in October 2008, Ghilarducci explained the motive behind the plan, stating, “I’m just rearranging the tax breaks that are available now for 401(k)s and spreading – spreading the wealth” (emphasis mine).

However, as we painfully learned in the immediate aftermath of the original $700 million dollar bailout, which was originally sold on the basis that it would be used to pay off bad debt, governments that propose “spreading the wealth” under socialist-style financial reforms almost always collect the wealth under the pretext of being the saviors before greedily hoarding it all for themselves.

The GRA program is being pushed by the Economic Policy Institute, an organization housed on the third floor of the building occupied by the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress. The Center for American Progress is a think tank headed by Bill Clinton’s former chief of staff John D. Podesta, who was also head of Barack Obama’s presidential transition team after the 2008 election.

In preparing to seize private pensions, the United States is going the same way as Argentinean government, which in 2008 nationalized the country’s private pension plans, known as AFJPs, confiscating the wealth of millions.

“We have no doubt that here the right to private property is being violated. Not just for us but for society and the world, this is a clear confiscation,” said opposition Radical Party’s Ernesto Sanz at the time.

How will Americans react to having not only their wealth but their nest egg for future generations brazenly confiscated by the government in one fell swoop? If this doesn’t prompt widespread rioting and civil disobedience in America on behalf of the besieged middle class then nothing will.

Don’t be under any illusions, if you don’t have a private pension and think this won’t affect you – think again. Once the pretext has been created that the state can simply confiscate privately earned wealth, they can then come after anything, your gold, your home, your kids and eventually your very freedom. Once the vampire of big government gets a taste for blood, the teeth will only sink in further, and America’s resemblance to third world tyrannies will rapidly accelerate.

6 comments:

  1. During a Seattle radio interview in October 2008, Ghilarducci explained the motive behind the plan, stating, “I’m just rearranging the tax breaks that are available now for 401(k)s and spreading – spreading the wealth”

    Something tells me that what is to be spread is margarine and not real butter....

    DAS SOCIALISM

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  2. ..."It's not nice to try to fool Mother Nature"...
    {grin}

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  3. Keep your hands off OUR money or we chop off your hands! That should be the immediate reply.

    In fact, the People must throw off the oppression of the Money Power psychos. They take taxpayer money and pay their buddies off. (Wall Street pay in 2010 by the way is at an All-Time High Again!). Repudiate all fraudulent debt, strip the political and elite class of ALL of their assets and power, and start over with new rules.

    Is there another way? Of course not. Talk ain't cheap when it gets you nothing but more lies and obfuscation. "Hit em where it hurts" has been around as an anecdotal phrase forever -- why? 'cause if you never hit them where it hurts, you lose the fight. Capeche?

    It is a Financial and Economic War here.

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  4. War College released a white paper called, 'Known Unknowns: Unconventional ‘Strategic Shocks’ in Defense Strategy Development'.

    The report warned that the military must be prepared for a “violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States,” which could be provoked by “unforeseen economic collapse,” “purposeful domestic resistance,” “pervasive public health emergencies” or “loss of functioning political and legal order.” The “widespread civil violence,” the document said, “would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.”

    “purposeful domestic resistance,” Of course this term actually means 'the will of the people', in purposeful resistance to the despotism the military is choosing to side with {as per the white paper}
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  5. To insure that the new taxes will crush the society and at the same time insure that the government gets back all the money it believes belongs to them, and does not remain in the hands of those that have earned it, the government plans to end social security altogether in December (probably on Christmas Eve or New Years Eve in some kind of secret session). The reason that I believe this (ending of so much of our personal financial security) to be more than just a rumor is: 'Because we did not react LAST YEAR when Social Security cost-of-living raises were denied, to the same 58 million that have just been told that they will NOT be getting a cost of living increase in 2011 either. This emboldened the criminals-in-government to proceed with their plans to strip us of our resources and throw us all into the trash, before we can use any of that money to survive their coming tax-storms."
    ~~Kirwan

    If this hits us like shock and awe...the society itself is doomed—immediately.
    Hysteria and chaos, clampdown and deep dark gulag.

    Probably in a matter of months...

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  6. The benefit of having a monolithic foreign policy based on a consensus crafted by America’s elites is that it will all pretty much function like an exclusive club where members are allowed to disagree mildly over what wine to have with dinner but not argue about the entrĂ©e. As a result, there will be zero transparency to what takes place and absolutely no accountability in a system that is designed to avoid internal conflict and change. Those who expect the government to serve the people should be particularly appalled at the revolving door of self-serving statists who proliferate throughout the system, men and women who have never had a genuine job in their lives but who scurry off to their law firms, lobbying offices, think tanks, and universities before returning at a higher level to the government bringing ruin with them~~Philip Giraldi

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