Posts Tagged ‘401k’

The White House pulls a switcheroo on retirement savings accounts.

How many times have you read financial-advice stories lecturing you to max-out on your IRA, save as much as you can in your 401(k), and even pay taxes now to change your regular IRA into a Roth IRA that will be tax-free until you die?

Well, be careful how much you save.

Read more at Wall Street Journal

Yeah, it’s going to do you a lot of good….

President Obama’s budget, to be released next week, will limit how much wealthy individuals – like Mitt Romney – can keep in IRAs and other retirement accounts.

…

Under the plan, a taxpayer’s tax-preferred retirement account, like an IRA, could not finance more than $205,000 per year of retirement – or right around $3 million this year.

Read more by Karl Denninger at market-ticker.org

I’ve laid this out before but it’s time to do it again, because it’s coming folks.

The recent ditty on how “nobody needs more than $3m for retirement”, defined as “whatever you need to get a $200,000 annuity”, is just one facet of how this will play out.

Since I started writing The Ticker I have been repeatedly asked where one should put their assets to evade confiscation, whether through outright acts of theft, devaluation or any other means.

Read more by Karl Denninger at market-ticker.org

–SNIP– You probably thought the Dodd-Frank Act was all about reining in greedy big banks and Wall Street predators.

Well then, what is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau it established doing planning to “help” people manage the $19.4 trillion they’ve managed to save for their retirement?

CFPB director and longtime Democratic politician Richard Cordray earlier this month told Bloomberg News that managing retirement savings is “one of the things we’ve been exploring … in terms of whether and what authority we have.”

Every such new creature legislated into existence by our elected officials wastes little time before seeking to expand its power — always with the best intentions, of course.

There always ends up being an excuse to do things the law doesn’t give you any authority for, and the CFPB’s Office for Older Americans being headed by another big government Democrat, Hubert H. Humphrey III, is further cause for worry.

What business, exactly, does a U.S. government that has rung up over $16.6 trillion in red ink have giving consumers advice on how to save money?

Read more at IBD

One of the earliest fears about tax-favored savings accounts like IRAs and 401(k) plans was that when this pool of savings grew large enough Congress would not be able to resist tapping it to help solve the nation’s debt problems. We’re about to find out if those fears—persistent for decades—have been justified.

Everything including the sacred mortgage deduction is on the table as lawmakers wrestle with the fiscal cliff, a year-end avalanche of scheduled spending cuts and tax increases. With a combined $10 trillion sitting in IRAs and 401(k) plans, retirement accounts make a juicy target. Some of this money has never been taxed, and under current law never will be.

Read more by Dan Kadlec at Time.com

WARNING: This is the liberal position. You have been warned.

Treasury, Labor on path to nationalize retirement

Two years ago, as WND reported, the Obama administration was proceeding with a novel way to finance trillion-dollar budget deficits by forcing IRA and 401(k) holders to buy Treasury bonds by mandating the placement of government-structured annuities in their retirement accounts.

Remarkably, those financial professionals specializing in private retirement savings and the U.S. citizens investing in private retirement plans now face the possibility the Obama administration and its allies on the political left will impose rules and regulations that effectively abolish the private retirement savings and investment markets.

Recent evidence suggests government officials continue to eye the multi-trillion dollar private retirement savings market, including IRAs and 401(k) plans, eyeing the opportunity to redistribute private retirement savings to less affluent Americans and to force the retirement savings out of the private market and into government-controlled programs investing in government-issued debt.

Read more by Jerome Corsi at WND.com

That’s a Democrat Governor urging broad limits to NY Public Pensions!

Cuomo Urges Broad Limits to N.Y. Public Pensions
By DANNY HAKIM and THOMAS KAPLAN, NY Times, 6/08/2011

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, joining a parade of officials from across the country who are seeking to rein in spending by limiting public employees’ pensions, proposed Wednesday to broadly limit retirement benefits for new city and state workers in New York.

Mr. Cuomo said New York State and New York City simply could no longer afford to offer new employees the generous benefits their predecessors received.

Among the most significant changes the governor proposes is to raise the minimum retirement age to 65 from 62 for state workers, and to 65 from 57 for teachers.

“The numbers speak for themselves — the pension system as we know it is unsustainable,” the governor said in a statement. “This bill institutes common-sense reforms to bring government benefits more in line with the private sector while still serving our employees and protecting our retirees.”

–SNIP– Unions have been fighting pension changes around the nation, particularly in states like Wisconsin and New Jersey, which have Republican governors.

Read more at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/09/nyregion/cuomo-proposes-tough-limits-on-pensions.html

So a democrat NY Governor is doing what Scott Walker is doing??