History is a great teacher. And if there is one thing you should have learned, desperate, bankrupt governments will always look for an easy and political palatable way out. One way they’ve done this is by raiding private pension funds, looting money you purportedly don’t “need” now and promising, like an addict, to pay it back as soon as they can. Or not.
Now, the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is weighing whether it should take a role to “help Americans manage the $19.4 trillion” in their IRAs. The CFPB was the recent creation of Dodd-Frank and the Obama administration, designed to make sure the poor consumer isn’t bullied by credit card companies into thinking they’re not paying any interest on their Mastercard. Their job is basically to shake down any and all profitable businesses in the financial sphere and make their life difficult. After tossing a grenade at the mortgage industry, it says payday lenders are next. Has any government agency with the word “Protection” in it ever made you feel protected?
Nonetheless, CFPB Director Richard Cordray is “exploring… what authority” he has to take over your IRA. After all, he says, with a straight face: Americans, notably Baby Boomers, may fall prey to financial scams.
We have to protect Americans from financial scams. After all, what could be a bigger scam than the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or the government-approved Ponzi Scheme called Social Security?
When the government Ponzi scheme comes crashing down, they’ll need ways to prop it up. Cordray is already setting the stage for a takeover of your privately held savings. He knows that broke regimes in Argentina and Hungary did it. Even Ireland imposed a temporary 0.6%-a-year tax on the asset value of retirement plans two years ago. Richard Cordray and his boss, newly emboldened from their re-election by the “give me” class, will increasingly look for ways to take from a growing number of evil people of means. Eventually, that definition could include even the paltriest of retirement accounts.
9/11 gave the government an easy out to blame all of our woes on “terrorism”. They used it to take away countless civil liberties and financial freedoms in the name of “keeping the homeland safe”. Now, the need to cover up their out of control spending will lead them to search for fresh targets. Regime leaders from Hitler (the original community organizer) on down know the first rule of crisis politics: find someone to blame. Be prepared before the person they blame is you.
