this has been confirmed with several federal agencies..will be an attempt to 'float' obama's marxism in a down economy. Norway floats their much 'lesser in scope' socialism with massive oil exploration, while obama cancels new oil patch leases here in the US, and China, Canada "drink our milkshake" with Cuba and 'slant drilling'.

http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/1830-401kIRA-Screw-Job-Coming.html

401k/IRA Screw Job Coming?
Now this is a guaranteed rape job.

In a short conversation this noontime that CNBC apparently has omitted from their archives (Why's that folks?) Rick Santelli was talking about a potential to effectively force money into the Treasury market.

Where would they get this?

From your 401k and IRA accounts!

From Businessweek:

The U.S. Treasury and Labor Departments will ask for public comment as soon as next week on ways to promote the conversion of 401(k) savings and Individual Retirement Accounts into annuities or other steady payment streams, according to Assistant Labor Secretary Phyllis C. Borzi and Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Mark Iwry, who are spearheading the effort.

Let me tell you what this is - it is an attempt to prevent the collapse of the Treasury market!

Forcing people into Treasuries as an "annuity" is exactly what Social Security allegedly is. Except that Treasury stole the money that was collected in FICA taxes and spent it!

Guess what? They'll do that here too - you're going to "invest" in Treasuries which of course are effectively a CALL option on the future taxing ability of the government.

The problem is that with an aging population and the immigrant problem (illegal immigrants that is), along with offshoring, the aggregate wage base will drop and thus this is the most dangerous investment of all!

What's even worse is that the government has intentionally suppressed Treasury yields during this crisis (and will keep doing so by various means, including manipulating the CPI - the "inflation index" - as they have for the last 30 years) so as to guarantee that you lose over time compared to actual purchasing power.

THIS HAS BEEN THE CASE SINCE THE 1980s AND IT WILL NOT CHANGE!

I have been talking about this for quite some time and recall writing a Ticker on it a year or more ago, although I can't find the entry immediately.

Let me be clear:

I have no quarrel with the government mandating that you have a choice in your IRA or 401k account to buy short-duration Treasuries - much like the "G" fund that government and civil-service workers have.

But - "choices" have a funny way of turning into mandates, and this looks to me like a raw admission that Treasury knows it will not be able to sell its debt in the open market - so they will effectively tax you by forcing your "retirement" money to buy them!

This may be the only way for Treasury to hold down interest rates to something reasonable in the intermediate term, but doing so will instantaneously remove a major source of funding for the stock market - that is, the monthly and quarterly inflows from retirement accounts.

You can bet this won't be good for you, the ordinary American.

You can also bet that once such an "option" is made available there is a very high probability of the government doing things that either promote or simply don't stand in the way of another stock market crash as a means of "herding" your money into Treasuries - so they can blow it - all under the guise of being allegedly "safe".

Of course this begs the question - what if the government can't pay down the road when you retire, just as they can't pay on a forward basis with Social Security and Medicare?

This "proposal" can only mean one thing - Treasury smells smoke. Maybe you should pay attention to what they're huffing!

And before you say "oh they'd never do that" I want you to read this:

Here is a warning to us all. The Argentine state is taking control of the country’s privately-managed pension funds in a drastic move to raise cash.

...

My fear is that governments in the US, Britain, and Europe will display similar reflexes. Indeed, they have already done so. The forced-feeding of banks with fresh capital – whether they want it or not – and the seizure of the Fannie/Freddie mortgage giants before they were in fact in trouble (in order to prevent a Chinese buying strike of US bonds and prevent a spike in US mortgage rates), shows that private property can be co-opted – or eliminated – with little due process if that is required to serve the collective welfare.

Any questions?

PS: If the video shows up I'll update this ticker.... and if you're wondering what hammered the dollar starting at about 9:00 today, this is probably it. Such a "move" would free the government to further abuse the issuance of Treasuries rather than take necessary austerity steps and places us even further down the road toward a political and economic collapse.

===
http://onemansthoughts.wordpress.com/2010/02/22/class-warfares-next-target-401k-savings/


Class Warfare’s Next Target: 401(k) Savings
February 22, 2010 · Leave a Comment
This is an article that appeared in Investor’s Business Daily by Newt Gingrich And Peter Ferrara

You did the responsible thing. You saved in your IRA or 401(k) to support your retirement, when you could have spent that money on another vacation, or an upscale car, or fancier clothes and jewelry. But now Washington is developing plans for your retirement savings.

BusinessWeek reports that the Treasury and Labor departments are asking for public comment on “the conversion of 401(k) savings and Individual Retirement Accounts into annuities or other steady payment streams.”

In plain English, the idea is for the government to take your retirement savings in return for a promise to pay you some monthly benefit in your retirement years.

They will tell you that you are “investing” your money in U.S. Treasury bonds. But they will use your money immediately to pay for their unprecedented trillion-dollar budget deficits, leaving nothing to back up their political promises, just as they have raided the Social Security trust funds.

This “conversion” may start out as an optional choice, though you are already free to buy Treasury bonds whenever you want. But as Karl Denninger of the Market Ticker Web site reports: “‘Choices’ have a funny way of turning into mandates, and this looks to me like a raw admission that Treasury knows it will not be able to sell its debt in the open market, so they will effectively tax you by forcing your ‘retirement’ money to buy them.”

Moreover, benefits based on Treasury bond interest rates may be woefully inadequate compensation for your years of savings. As Denninger adds, “What’s even worse is that the government has intentionally suppressed Treasury yields during this crisis (and will keep doing so by various means, including manipulating the CPI inflation index) so as to guarantee that you lose over time compared to actual purchasing power.”

This proposal follows hearings held last fall by House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-Calif., and Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., of the Ways and Means Committee focusing on “redirecting (IRA and 401k) tax breaks to a new system of guaranteed retirement accounts to which all workers would be obliged to contribute,” as reported by InvestmentNews.com.

The hearings examined a proposal from professor Teresa Ghilarducci of the New School for Social Research in New York to give all workers “a $600 annual inflation-adjusted subsidy from the U.S. government” in return for requiring workers “to invest 5% of their pay into a guaranteed retirement account administered by the Social Security Administration.”

Argentina provided a precedent in 2008, taking over that country’s private retirement accounts for forced investment in government bonds to cover spiraling deficits. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard editorialized at the time in Britain’s Daily Telegraph that this may be “a foretaste of what may happen across the world as governments discover .. . that the bond markets are unwilling to plug the (deficit) gap. . .. My fear is that governments in the U.S., Britain and Europe will display similar reflexes.”

This is just the latest chapter in what is developing into a war by the left on America’s seniors. All that class-war rhetoric about “the rich” ends up targeting seniors, who tend to have accumulated the most in savings and investment on average because they have been around the longest.

Obama, House Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid targeted seniors for hundreds of billions in Medicare cuts to finance expanded Medicaid for the poor and other new entitlements in the ObamaCare health care takeover legislation. If you liked your health insurance, you were supposed to be able to keep it, except for the 25% of seniors who had chosen Medicare Advantage private health plans for their Medicare coverage.

Even the Medicare actuaries estimated that most of those seniors would lose their Medicare Advantage coverage because of all the ObamaCare cuts for those plans. Obama has even begun rationing for seniors under Medicare by slashing payments to heart and cancer specialists serving seniors under that program.

All of this reflects a fundamental problem underlying socialist economic policies. If the government keeps punishing responsibility and rewarding failure, society ends up with a lot less responsibility and a lot more failure, destroying prosperity in the process.

As former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said, “The trouble with socialism is you run out of other people’s money to spend.” And now they want to spend our retirement savings.

Congressional Republicans should introduce legislation to block the government from ever proceeding with anything like this. Call it the “Keep Your Hands Off My 401(k) Act of 2010.”

Gingrich is former speaker of the House.

Ferrara is director of entitlement and budget policy for the Institute for Policy Innovation.

=-=-=-=-

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=128409


a host also confirmed this by repeatedly asking the NW census head, for WA,OR, AK and sev. others, an Asian named Lee: he refused to answer yes or no to the repeated question, will citizens be fined for refusing to comply..

YOUR PAPERS, PLEASE ...

Census threat: $5,000 fines
U.S. congressman slams 'Big Brother' questions

Posted: March 16, 2010
9:09 pm Eastern


By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2010 WorldNetDaily



Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas


How many people live in your home? Are any of them Hispanic? Are the people who live in your home citizens? How big is your home? Do you have difficulty making decisions or climbing stairs? How much do you pay for your sewage system? Are you married? What's your rent or mortgage payment? Do you own an automobile? Are you on food stamps? How much money do you make?

These are just a sample of the highly detailed and personal questions asked in the mandatory American Community Survey the U.S. Census Bureau will send to a sample of some 3 million U.S. households in addition to the 2010 Census.

Refusing to answer the questions or answering them incorrectly will subject citizens to hefty fines.

The U.S. Census website for the American Community Survey warns that under Title 13 of the U.S. Code, Section 221, anyone who refuses to answer the 11-page 48-question survey, or who answers the questions with false information, will be subject to a possible $5,000 fine.

Get "Taking America Back," Joseph Farah's manifesto for sovereignty, self-reliance and moral renewal

As WND reported last year, Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, introduced H.R. 3131 to make participation in the extended ACS survey voluntary.

(Story continues below)




In an e-mail to WND, Poe repeated his charge that the American Community Survey amounts to an Obama administration attempt to create a "government dossier on American citizens."

Unable to move the resolution through a Democratic Party–controlled House of Representatives, Poe continues to argue that the law should be changed to make the American Community Survey voluntary.

"The federal government has a constitutional duty to count the number of people in the United States every 10 years," Poe told WND. "But the federal government has no business keeping a comprehensive personal profile on every American citizen.

"The government can take this detailed information about each person who answers the American Community Survey and use that information for its own purposes," he said. "This is Big Brother at its worst. To me, it's an invasion of privacy by the federal government all in the name of taking care of us."

WND has consistently found the Census Department difficult to reach for comment. No media phone number or contact person is published on the home page of the U.S. Census Bureau. By typing "news" into the Census Bureau homepage search engine, a page displays the phone number 301-763-3030 as the bureau's Public Information Office. Dialing that number, WND received a recording that directed news reporters to dial yet another number, 301-763-3691. Dialing that number, WND encountered voice mail.

After a request for a call on the voice mail, the Census Bureau Public Information Office neglected to return the call.

Among the questions asked on the 11-page American Community Survey are:

The first section of the ACS asks for the full name of each person living in the household, the total number of people, how the people are related to each other, the date of birth, sex and race of each person and whether any are of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin.


The second section surveys housing, asking whether the household is a mobile home, a one-family detached home, a one-family home attached to one or more houses, an apartment or a boat, RV or van.


Then the ACS asks what year the building was built; when "Person No. 1" in the housing section moved into the home; the size of land the home is on; what agricultural products were sold from the property in the last 12 months; whether the property was used as a business; how many separate rooms are in the house; whether the house has hot and cold running water; whether the house has a flush toilet, a shower or bathtub, a sink with a faucet, a stove or range, a refrigerator and a telephone; how many cars, vans and trucks are kept at the property; and what fuel is most used at the property – gas, electricity, fuel oil or kerosene, coal or coke, wood, solar energy, or "other."


Further, the housing section in the ACS asks what was last month's bill for energy, what was the cost of water and sewage for the housing unit in the last year, whether anyone in the household received food stamps in the last year, the monthly rental or mortgage cost of the unit, an estimate of the resale value of the housing unit, the unit's annual property taxes and the annual cost of fire, hazard and flood insurance on the property.


The ACS wants to know if Person No. 1 in the household is a citizen; if the person was born in the U.S. or when the person came to the U.S.; whether the person had attended college in the last three years and what is the highest level of education the person has completed; the person's ancestry or ethnic origin; whether the person speaks a language other than English at home, and if yes, what language; whether the person lived in this housing unit or an apartment a year ago; whether the person is covered by health insurance, and if yes, by what type of health insurance.


Next, Person No. 1 must answer if he/she is deaf or has difficulty hearing; if the person is blind or has serious difficulty seeing even when wearing glasses; if the person has difficulty concentrating, remembering or making decisions because of a physical, mental or emotional condition; whether the person has serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs; whether the person has difficulty bathing or dressing; whether the person has difficulty doing errands alone such as visiting a doctor's office or shopping because of a physical, mental, or emotional condition; what is the person's marital status; whether the person has given birth to any children in the past 12 months; whether the person has any grandchildren under the age of 18 in the house or apartment; whether the person has ever served on active duty in the U.S. armed forces; whether the person has a VA service-connected disability rating, and if yes, what percentage is the VA disability rating.


The ACS also asks whether Person No. 1 worked last week for pay; at what address, town, city and country did the person work last week; how did the person get to work and if by car, bus, railroad, taxi, motorcycle or bicycle or on foot; whether the person, if unemployed, has been actively looking for work in the past four weeks; whether the person, if unemployed, was available to start work if offered a job or recalled to work in the past week; and how many weeks the person worked in the past year and how many hours per week.


Finally, Person No. 1 must disclose whether his or her most recent work was for a private for-profit company, a private not-for-profit, a local government, a state government or the federal government, or whether the person was self-employed in their own incorporated or unincorporated business, or whether the person worked without pay in a family business or on the family farm; the name of the employer; the type of business; whether the business was manufacturing, wholesale trade, retail trade, or other; the exact job description of the person and his or her most important duties; his or her income over the past 12 months and the amount of that income that came from wages, salary, commission, bonuses or tips; whether the person received any Social Security or Railroad Retirement benefits, or any other type of public assistance in the past 12 months; and the person's entire income over the past 12 months, both from employment or public-welfare sources.
The American Community Survey is available as a PDF file in English or Spanish on the Census Bureau's website.

In 2007 during work on the American Community Survey portion of the Census Bureau's responsibilities, spokesman Clyve Richmond told WND, "The Census Bureau has never prosecuted anybody. We try to work with people and explain how useful the information is."

The Associated Press reported this week the Census Bureau "rarely" seeks fines for failing to answer.