Obama Step Closer to Seizing Retirement Accounts - Proposes in SOTU address T-Bills for IRA, 401(k)

Jerome R. Corsi / WND

NEW YORK – When you hear, “Hello, I’m from the federal government and I want to help you manage your retirement savings,” the best advice is to run away, as fast as you can.

In November 2012, WND reported the Obama administration was exploring a creative way to finance continuing trillion-dollar annual federal budget deficits through forcing private citizens holding IRA and 401(k) accounts to purchase Treasury bonds by mandating the placement of government-structured annuities in their retirement accounts.

Two years ago, WND reported the U.S. Department of Labor and the Treasury Department held joint hearings on whether government lifetime annuity options funded by U.S. Treasury debt should be required for private retirement accounts, including IRAs and 401(k) plans.

It looks like that day is getting closer.

Packaged as a new retirement-savers plan designed for workers whose employers do not offer IRAs or 401(k), President Obama announced in his State of the Union address Tuesday an initiative that allows first-time savers to start building up their savings in Treasury bonds that could eventually be converted into traditional IRAs or 401(k) plans.

While it is not as onerous as an Obama administration directive demanding a certain percentage of individual retirement savings must be invested in U.S. Treasury bonds, it is a first step in that direction.

With the Obama administration having run federal budget deficits in the range of $1 trillion every year in office since 2009, and with the Federal Reserve announcing a new policy to “taper” Quantitative Easing by buying $10 billion a month less in U.S. government debt every month this year until QE hits zero, somebody has to buy all the Treasury debt the Obama administration plans to issue.

In January 2013, the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau suggested it should play a role in helping Americans manage the $19.4 trillion they have put into retirement savings.

“That’s one of the things we’ve been exploring and are interested in terms of whether and what authority we have,” bureau director Richard Cordray told Bloomberg in an interview.

Under the direction of the Obama White House, the Treasury and Labor departments have increasingly pushed the investment theory that because government bonds carry a sovereign guarantee against default, any IRA or 401(k) funds placed in a Treasury R-Bond would constitute, in effect, a government annuity that would pay the retiree a lifetime income, regardless how stock and bond markets might independently perform.

Read more at WND: 

http://www.wnd.com/2014/01/obama-step-closer-to-seizing-retirement-accounts/#hPWComcPY6YPrzvY.99