Bernanke's victims speak out

In response to an article on the Fed ruining elderly savers with zero interest rates, three such victims wrote letters to the editor in today’s Wall Street Journal:

When my wife and I planned for our retirement we only expected a return of 4% to 6% on our savings to maintain a comfortable lifestyle. As luck would have it, we retired right into Alan Greenspan’s low interest-rates folly. Thankfully, we were “laddered” and survived his relatively short dip with principal intact. But Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s never-ending “zero” interest-rate policy has caused us to bite, not dip, into our principal (“Fed’s Low Interest Rates Crack Retirees’ Nest Eggs,” page one, April 4).

We expect to do our fair share to help the nation recover. To destroy, however, a whole class of senior citizens who have very few tools with which to fight back, while the banks get richer and richer, isn’t the American dream.

Here’s a message to Ben Bernanke: Get interest rates heading back up to normal levels and the economy will start thinking positively and return to normal levels. Zero rates make everyone think we’re still at the edge of a cliff.

Richard Hippner
Sun Lakes, Ariz.

As a tax preparer, I have watched as my clients’ incomes have fallen for the last three years as their higher earning CDs mature and are rolled over into the near-zero rate environment. They feel they are the ones being punished to save the banks and homeowners.

This is nothing more than a transfer of wealth from savers to speculators, and our country will be worse off because of it.

Richard Chappell
West Chester, Ohio

When I retired, 6% was an average CD rate, and I blindly thought it would continue. Later, the government forced me to take out specific amounts of money whether I wanted to or not. Now the interest rate hovers around 1%.

No longer can we live on interest but are forced to reduce our principal in a downward spiral. Evidently President Obama wants to reduce us to abject poverty so we will be forced to depend on government aid. Welcome to the U.S.S.A., the United Socialist States of America.

Harold G. Cohon
Morton Grove, Ill.

The Greatest Generation are now Bernanke’s collateral damage. The Selfish Generation, baby boomers, have managed to destroy both their parents’ generation with dollar debasement and their children’s and grandchildren’s generations with debt. Well played, boomers. Hope you enjoy that home-equity-funded retirement.

Read more at W.C. Varones