Nationalizing Pension Funds

From Boortz and Vision to America;

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it."




Frederic Bastiat





NATIONALIZING PENSION FUNDS

By Neal Boortz @ November 9, 2010 9:09 AM Permalink
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Now ... let me see ... what have I been warning you about for 16 years now? Hmmmmmmmmm. Let me think. Oh yeah! I remember! I've been warning you since 1994 that if the Democrats were even given complete control in Washington again they would move to seize all or some of your retirement plans. Well, sure enough. A little as six weeks ago they were holding hearings in congress related to the seizure of private retirement accounts. The argument was that some people will take the money out of their accounts and spend it too fast ... and then they'll be left with no money for their retirement. So ... it's the job of our wonderful paternalistic federal government to seize this money. Why? For our own good! That's why! Then the government can dole that money out to us so that we'll have some sort of nice little guaranteed retirement income.



Well .. that's the reason they're expressing for public consumption. The real reason? Unions. Yup .. there you go. Unions. You see many, if not most (perhaps all?) union plans are underfunded. Why? Well, maybe this is because union leaders, in love with their positions of power, spend too much from union dues to promote political candidates. Make that promote Democrat candidates. I haven't seen the study, but I am wondering how many of these pension plans would be in trouble if that money funneled to candidates was used instead to fund pensions? While that might be an interesting question, the fact is the pension plans are in trouble and Democrats are more than ready to step forward and protect their union friends - not to mention contributions and political assistance. Where do the Democrats get the money to shore up these union plans? From you, that's where. And the excuse they use is that they are somehow protecting YOU, not their union pals.



We've dodged a bullet ... for a while. The Democrats don't have the power in congress right now to make their move. They're patient, though, and they know they're dealing with the dumb masses here ... so the dream lives on. Perhaps it's only a matter of time before the Democrats get their hands on your pension funds. We're talking trillions of dollars here ... and politicians are genetically unable to ignore that much money sitting around that they aren't controlling.



Back in 2008, Argentina seized all private pension plans in efforts to pay its debts. Is this jogging your memory? The government nationalized $30 billion worth of assets under the guise of "protecting" the people from the perils of a volatile capitalist system. Ohhh ... but you say ... can't happen here! Are you willing to bet your retirement on that?



Now we have a European nation, a member of the European Union, making moves to nationalize its private pension funds in order to get its hands on billions of dollars. In this case it is Hungary. Yes, Kellie Pickler, that's a country. (Sorry, you're cute and all that. But sooner or later a guy would have to have a conversation with you.) The Wall Street Journal reports ...



Hungary is on its way to nationalizing the country's private pension funds. The public's ignorance about the system and gaps in financial education are playing into the government's hands.



Hungary has a three-pillar pension system, with the state-funded pay-as-you-go scheme being the first pillar. It's complemented with a mandatory private pension-fund regime introduced in 1997 as the second pillar, where payments toward future pensions are deducted from gross wages and invested on the market to generate additional returns. There's also an optional third pillar, which enables future pensioners to save more money for their pension by contributing some of their net income to private pension funds.



The government now wants to scrap the mandatory private pension fund pillar and to put its hands on the savings amassed by the nearly three million pension fund members over the past 13 years. The savings managed by the private pension funds equal roughly $13.73 billion, or 10% of gross domestic product ...



Do you think this idea is now dead in the United States? Do you think the voters killed it off in that election one week ago today? Yeah? Well then, check your history. Check the history of Democrat attempts to nationalize our health care. That one goes back to Roosevelt. Johnson tried. Kennedy made a stab at it. Power-swimmer and all-around nice guy Ted Kennedy made it his life's work. It took a while, but finally we had the perfect confluence of a recession, an anti-capitalist political hack with a nice speaking voice, a teleprompter, a logo and some five-word slogans that didn't test the intelligence of the public ... add all that to an electorate sucked into a black hole of ignorance and ... voila! A Democrat congress.



It's your money. They want it. They have the guns. You have the votes. Are you going to go back to your daily routine of celebrity worship and sports? Or are you going to keep focusing on these dangerous people.