They're Coming For Your Retirement Plan

Another great insight from Doug Casey:

I just looked up John Williams’ shadow stats on unemployment, and he’s showing BLS Broadest unemployment, which includes “short-term discouraged workers” at over 17%. His SGS alternate unemployment, which includes “long-term discouraged workers” (who were “defined out of official existence in 1994”), is about 22%.

One of the things that makes this particularly serious now is that rumors are circulating about the government licking its chops over all the money sitting in personal pension funds, Keogh plans, HR-10 plans, etc. The Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC – like the FDIC, but for pension funds) is bankrupt, and it’s going to get much worse. It’s still early days in this grand misadventure. Usually – not always, but usually – when things get really bad, they float some trial balloons to see how people might react to things they are considering. One of the most dangerous proposals floating out there now is that, since people’s pension plans have been hurt so badly, people should be required to buy annuities with their pension funds.

Still adding to your retirement plan? Not smart!

Doug continues later in the article talking about Social Security.

Well, that’s never been anything but a welfare scheme. Logic does not apply in the government sphere. One way or another, the government will get more involved in pensions, and I suspect they’ll do it like they did down here in Argentina. I doubt most Americans are aware that the Argentine government basically nationalized everyone’s private pension plans last year, including those denominated in dollars, and now they are going to pay people in pesos, fresh off the printing press. I think the same thing is going to happen in the U.S.: they’ll require that a certain percentage of your pension plan be used to buy T-bills, or other government securities, or an approved annuity. This will be for the safety of The People, of course. The end result will be to wipe out an entire form of financial security Americans count on today.

So what should we do Doug?

The smartest thing to do would be to get them offshore. I say this so often in these conversations and other places that I fear sounding like a broken record, but it’s really that important. But it’s absolutely true that for an American, the safest wealth is the wealth that’s outside of the U.S. Your biggest risk is a political risk, from a completely bankrupt U.S. government.

The government is desperate for money.