Nationwide, retirement accounts at Risk!

Nationwide, Retirement Accounts At Risk!!Do you have money in a “Qualified-Savings-Plan”? Then you need to be aware that nationwide, retirement accounts are at risk!

If you are a working citizen of the United States than most likely you do have money in a government sponsored savings plan. You may know them by their everyday names: 401(k), IRA, Roth IRA, 403(b) etc…

The designation “Qualified-Savings-Plan” means that these plans meet the standards set forth by the IRS for tax-favored status. In other words the federal government created these types of accounts by Congressional action which means the government controls and dictates via Congress the functionality of said accounts. In extreme situations the government can seize the monies inside these accounts as well.

Don’t think it could happen?

                                  It already has!

Governments and associated banking institutions around the globe have been imposing stiff capital controls, tax hikes, account freezes, and even out right asset seizure of their citizens’ wealth. Below are some recent events.

  1. Most well known incident in modern history happened in Cyprus where the state confiscated private assets in what they called an “emergency-tax-levy”.
  2. Collapse of Argentina’s economy  in 2001 and near second collapse in 2008 spurred the government to confiscate $29 billion from private pensions.
  3. Ireland, laden with political and financial troubles, had 4 billion Euro seized from the Pension Reserve Fund in 2009 and used it to prop-up the country’s failing economy.
  4. In cold November of 2010 French legislators decided to freeze 33 billion Euro of their nation’s pension fund, the FRR, in order to cut short-term deficits.

Pillaging the Citizen's Savings

It is noteworthy to mention here that when countries around the world stray from currency backed by gold, deficit spending is then most probable leading to financial ruin!

  1. December of 2010 the country of Hungary gave their citizens an ultimatum, which was; give-up their private pension assets to the government or forego state pension funds while still being required to contribute to it.
  2. January 2011, Bulgaria transferred $60 million from private retirement accounts to the state’s pension system.
  3. Poland, Canada, New Zealand and many other countries including the United States have began implementation or have seriously considered private funds confiscation to the point of actually holding votes.

“But not in the United States!”, you say.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but the United States Government has already defaulted and confiscated your money to support it’s failed monetary policies.

FDR portriat

 

By executive order 6102 President FDR  during the Great Depression forced citizens to “sell” their gold to the government or face being hauled off to jail as this order effectively criminalized ownership of gold by private citizens, partnerships, and corporations.

Furthermore, in many states the use or common exchange of gold, silver, or other precious metals as a means of trade has been outlawed for decades.

Not until recently have some states lifted this ban and now allow or accept these assets as a medium of exchange for goods and services.

So what is stopping the government from taking a portion of your savings that are held in accounts like 401(k)s, IRAs, 403(b)s etc…?

Simple. The situation to warrant such a steal has not yet arrived.

 

Taking money from these accounts would actually be easier to seize than privately held gold and silver was back in FDR’s day because the government created and oversees these accounts via the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). We all know how nice those guys are!

A financial collapse like mentioned above in numerous other countries could and probably would facilitate the right circumstance for a seizure of some or all government sponsored savings and retirement accounts.

There is roughly 5 trillion dollars socked away in these types of plans. That’s very tempting for the insatiable appetite of deficit spending.

Hard working middle-class Americans have been stashing their cash blindly into these accounts on the mere “word” that the accounts would grow and provide for secure retirement.

Annuity companies who sell these plans and the governments who create them are the ones benefiting the most and it’s all at your expense.

As the saying goes; “There are only two guarantees in life:Death and Taxes”.

Death by taxes!

Though many of us think the government is a fruitless leach, it is actually very good at one thing.

It is Expert at getting your money! If you have ever been behind on taxes or made a large lump sum of cash then you know what I mean.

Taxes are your biggest expense by far!

Alan Greenspan, an economist who was also Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1986 – 2006 effectively says that taxation is legal plunder utilized by governments to take citizen’s private assets to be used as government sees fit.

In 1966, only five years before President Nixon removed the US dollar from the Gold Standard, he wrote an article in The Objectivist where he speaks to the strengths of having a gold standard and also the horrors of over-taxation.

He also explains the ill effects and troubles that governments create for themselves and their citizens by moving off the gold standard and into a fiat currency or paper note whose value is tied only to the issuing government’s future ability to pay its’ debts.

In the following excerpt, Greenspan clearly describes some of the reasons behind the gold  seizure April 5th 1933.

As you read this, think about all the different taxes that you are required to pay including your money in your retirement accounts and see if it is justified or not.

Alan Greenspan portriat

“…. the gold standard is incompatible with chronic deficit spending (the hallmark of the welfare state).

Stripped of its academic jargon, the welfare state is nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members of a society to support a wide variety of welfare schemes.

A substantial part of the confiscation is affected by taxation. In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation.

There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold.

If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks/paper dollars as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods.

The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold.

Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process.

It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard.

You may have read this article and thought that I was only speaking about out-right confiscation or freezing of your accounts.

I would like to clarify my opinion by saying that I know that when big problems arise, the people at the top who created it almost always shift the blame and the burden onto the little guys namely: you and me!

Taxation on your retirement funds as well as limitations on its use and high penalties associated with using your own money held in these funds is nothing short of government seizure of your hard earned nest egg.

There are proven, and by proven I mean legal and profitable, ways to relocate those trapped funds into assets that grow in value and produce a sustainable monthly income!

Share this article and let me know what you think! Leave a comment below!

Nationwide, retirement accounts  at Risk! By Joe Nielsen

2 Comments

  1. What kind of savings ancouct?If this is a regular ancouct at the bank, you pay tax on the interest income each year but nothing when you take the money out.If it’s a brokerage ancouct invested in mutual funds, then there can be capital gains when the mutual funds are sold (and you have to sell them to get the money out). The tax is only on the GAIN, not the entire amount. Commonly called UGMA and UTMA ancoucts.If this is a tax deferred savings ancouct (529 plan or coverdell ESA), then you don’t pay taxes each year, but then look at what the money is spent on when it’s withdrawn. If it’s used for qualified educational expenses, it’s tax exempt. If not, tax + 10% penalty.

    • Hi Ahmet,
      This article is specifically talking about IRS qualified retirement/savings accounts in the US.
      You are very much correct about the different accounts you mention here. The point I was trying to make was that since these accounts holding roughly 4.5 Trillion USD is all controlled by the government of the United States. It is not unheard of in this country and others around the world both currently and historically have at some point deemed it necessary to “use” your money that is in those accounts for their own purposes. Current tax laws including but not limited to capital gains, penalties, and special purpose taxes as well as capital controls about how much cash you can withdraw from any account and where you can put that, whether offshore in another country or banking jurisdiction altogether are the major issues facing retirees who will sorely depend on this money.
      I try to get people to think how absurd it is to hand over the money they have worked so hard for to companies and governments who turn around and place restrictions on how the depositor can use their own money! It’s insanity in my opinion.
      Great points Ahmet and thanks for commenting!

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