The U.S. Government Wants to Takeover Your Private Retirement Funds to Pay Off the Federal Debt

Could Obama Be Moving to Take Private Pension Funds?

May 8, 2011

Lone Star Watchdog - The vote on raising the debt ceiling is coming up for a vote in congress. There is a very good chance the debt ceiling will not be raised were the Congress will not borrow anymore money and move towards having a balanced budget.

The President wants to borrow the funds in expansion of government. He is looking for money. If he cannot borrow anymore and the Federal Reserve cannot move onto Quantitative Easing 3(QE3) -- printing money, buying our treasuries to fund the government -- then the President is looking for a source to fund his extravagant big government programs.

He is looking at everyone’s private pension funds to nationalize as a way confiscating people’s retirement savings as a source of money to fund the Federal Government and Wall Street. The last act of government is to the loot the people and the nation.

I do not trust the government to manage anyone’s pension funds -- they proven that they cannot oversee Social Security. Congress and the President over the years have looted the Social Security trust fund to spend on big government.

While the world watches the alleged killing of Osama Bin Laden, we must be on the watch for move by this Administration to pull a fast one stealing the pension funds from hard working people who worked all their lives. We all need to get our 401ks and IRAs as far as we can away from Obama’s reach. I suggest we put it in gold and silver coins. This is an asset we can have in our possession (and please do not put these precious metals in the bank’s safety deposit boxes; the government has been known to raid the safety deposit boxes in the past).

I am not saying he is doing this as I am typing. All I am saying is keep watch. While most people are looking in one direction, we need to look in the opposite place for the unexpected slide of hand to nationalize the private pension funds if he can not borrow anymore.

This could be a real possibility real soon if congress does not raise the debt ceiling and the President is looking for money to fund his big and ever-expanding government programs. We could face another government shutdown. I can see this in the works. The President might resort to confiscating the 401ks and IRAs to avoid a complete government shutdown.

We must keep watch in the other direction too when the world the country is looking in another. This President is unpredictable and he might confiscate people pension funds if Congress does not give him what he wants. We must keep watch in all directions.

The President’s agenda and his administration is a cornered rat and desperate. He is looking for payback. If Congress does not allow him to borrow anymore money, he might just seize the private pension funds using the excuse that he needs to keep the government going or he will not be able to pay the troops.

Obama Executive Order Moves Mandatory Savings Account Scheme Forward

February 23, 2010

The John Birch Society - The chairman emeritus of The Council on Foreign Relations, Peter Peterson would like to control your new mandatory savings account and president Obama is doing his best to accommodate him.

In his State of the Union address on January 27th, president Obama announced that he would be forming by executive order a biparitsan budget commission. On February 18th, he made good on that pledge.

In his address to the nation, the president said this commission would be patterned on the one envisioned in legislation introduced by senators Conrad and Gregg that had been defeated in the U.S. Senate just the day before. However, the commission envisioned by Conrad and Gregg was actually the brainchild of billionaire Wall Street insider Peter Peterson and the foundation bearing his name.

Peterson has been pedaling the idea of an independent commission as the way to address the budget deficit and debt crisis of the federal government since at least July 2008, when his foundation purchased and released the documentary film IOUSA. As stated in the Peterson Foundation press release issued before Obama's speech,

The proposed commission should "not rule out any potential solutions in advance--all spending and revenue related options should be on the table." (italic emphasis as in the original)

The all options on the table talking point has already been confirmed by the two co-chairs now named to the commission by president Obama: former Clinton Chief of Staff, Erskin Bowles and former Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming. In a weekend interview on the Bloomberg News show Political Capital With Al Hunt, Bowles and Simpson also professed their desire to have Peterson's bagmen Conrad and Gregg join them on the commission.

Mr. Peterson, his foundation and the collaborators he has picked up along the way know what ails us and they are going to use what should properly be called The Peterson Commission as the delivery vector for their cure. The problem of course is that our cure is coming from the same crowd that intentionally infected us with their mortal canker in the first place.

What kind of crowd Peterson been running with? His career highlights include:

• an early stint as CEO of the later to be infamous Lehman Brothers,
  
• an appointment to the Independent Commission on International Development Issues headed by Socialist Internationale president Willy Brandt,
  
• chairman of the New York Fed, chairman and chairman emeritus titles at The Council of Foreign Relations, and
  
• co-founder of the the Blackstone Group the outfit charged with funneling federal bailout money through AIG to Goldman Sachs and other undisclosed parties.

Among the options being put on the table for The Peterson Commission, the most novel is the Peterson Foundation's recommendation that American wage earners should be forced into participating in mandatory savings accounts.

These worker saving accounts would be like what Social Security was originally sold to be -- retirement savings accounts mandated by the federal government that workers (and their employers) would pay into during their working years so that they could have something to support themselves with in retirement. The twist on this version of the scam would be that this time there really would be individual accounts with a workers name on them. And a special bonus; rather than being managed by the federal government, they would be managed by private investment firms...like the Blackstone Group that Peter Peterson just happens to operate.

Now voluntary savings would be one thing, but the adjective "mandatory" has been used. Peterson himself used the word during the live discussion that took place immediately following the premier showing of IOUSA in select theaters around the country. That interview is the copyrighted material of the Peterson Foundation. For now, all we have to titillate video fans is the short clip of Peterson using the word "provocative" as he lead into his explanation of why mandatory savings are required.

We do have the Peterson Foundation down in writing though using the word "mandatory." The day after the premier of IOUSA, Peterson's hired gun, David Walker, former Arthur Anderson board member GAO director gave a presentation at a town hall meeting hosted by Virginia Congressman Jim Moran. On slide number 27 of Walker's presentation we read:

"Consider mandatory supplemental individual savings accounts on a payroll deduction basis (e.g., a minimum 2 percent payroll contribution and a program designed much like the Federal Thrift Savings Plan with a real trust fund and real investments)"

Mandatory is not the only red flag in Walker's presentation. That the Peterson Foundation plan for all wage earners might be patterned on the Federal Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) is also provocative.

The TSP, available for federal employees like congressional staff workers, has over $200 billion of assets (on paper anyway). About half these assets are in special non-negotiable US Treasury notes issued especially for the TSP scheme. The other half are invested in stocks, bonds and other securities.

The US Treasury manages its IOU's in the plan. The nearly $100 billion in the other half of the plan is managed by Blackrock Financial. And, yes, shock, Blackrock Financial is a creation of Mr. Peterson's Blackstone Group. In fact, the TSP and Blackstone were birthed almost as a matched set. It's tough to fail when you form an investment management company at the same time you can gain the contract that directs a percentage of the Federal government payroll into your hands. Putting in the federal law that created the TSP the stipulation that the fund management company will have all voting rights for the shares held was a nice touch too.

Mr. Peterson and his friends have demonstrated that they know well how to play the system. It is not hard to imagine that the Obama's bipartisan Peterson Commission will be used to develop a done deal, must pass piece of legislation to be introduced in the coming lame duck session of Congress.

Using the Peterson TSP scheme as a guide, we should expect then that among the many austerity measures to be initiated by this legislation will likely be a program that, under the guise of funding a retirement savings account, a percentage of every American worker's paycheck will be siphoned off into the control of Mr. Peterson and his fellow banking syndicate cronies. It is also likely that a significant portion of this mandatory retirement savings money will be earmarked for purchasing the ultimate supposed safe haven investment: U.S. Treasuries. That is, as the smart money begins to bail en masse from Treasury auctions, plans are already in the works to have Americans to buy their own toxic debt.

Americans will thus be forced into a new scheme under which they will be required to hold IOU's from the federal government. Mandatory savings accounts will be used as both a stealth social security tax increase and a guaranteed income stream for the likes of Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley and of course Mr. Peterson's Blackstone Group.

Bottom line: Mr. Peterson is not concerned about solving the nation's budget crisis as much as he is making sure that he doesn't miss a chance to line his own pockets at our expense. If we are smart we will kill The Peterson Commission before it gets off the ground. The best way to do this is to convince Republican minority leaders in the Congress that they should refuse to appoint Republican members to the commission.

Contact Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and House GOP Leader John Boehner of Ohio, immediately. Tell them that Republicans should not participate in a scheme designed to take advantage of a lame duck session of Congress. If what the Peterson Commission is planning is sincerely in the best interests of the American people, its recommendations should be made public either well BEFORE Congress adjourns for the November election, or AFTER the 112th Congress is seated in 2011. Anything done in between is sure to be devious.

Take action now, or you may soon be forcibly drafted into paying for dodgy US Treasuries out of your weekly paycheck — while handing some shady investment banker a transaction fee on top of it.

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