MyRA and Fool Me Twice

Resident Obama has announced that the federal government will start offering what amounts to a financial product which he calls "MyRA". Basically, instead of investing our retirement nest egg ourselves, or hiring a private broker to do so, we give the money to the government. The government invests it in "safe" government bonds, with a "guaranteed return."  

The man who told America "If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. Period" is now telling Americans "If you like your retirement savings, you can keep your retirement savings."     He was lying then (not just didn't see it coming, it was a specific feature of the ACA whose impact was discussed), and he is lying now.

Dear readers, please do not give these thieves any more of your money than you have to.  What they extract under threat of imprisonment is bad enough, but to voluntarily hand over your savings to individuals this disreputable is beyond foolish.  MyRA is not a retirement plan so much as it is a tax on stupidity, and we each get to decide how much we pay.

This is pretty much a repeat of the Social Security "trust fund."   Because the Baby Boomers were so large a demographic compared to their parents, they overpaid into the fund during their working years.  Now they are retiring and its time to pull the money out.  

Unfortunately, the money is gone.  Congress took it and spent it on giveaway programs to the rich, the poor, and the middle class in order to buy votes.   There is nothing in the Social Security "trust fund" but I.O.U.s, such as those in Mr. Cary's briefcase.    When it is time to issue checks from monies in the fund, all they can do is go borrow some more or stick a gun to your head in order for you to pay on the I.O.U.s.

We have been doing Q.E. for years, which is little more than creating money backed by debt then handing the banksters et al the money, while the debt is charged to our account.   This flow of magic money has been propping up the stock market for years.   When it finally stops, stock values will find their true value somewhere lower.

If the government wanted to prop up the stock market, they could have at least used the overpayments to the Social Security Trust fund to invest in stocks.   That way when it is time to withdraw money from the fund all they would have to do is sell some stock.  They would have equity securities in the fund, not just our own debt.   Now to draw money from the fund they have to raise our taxes, or increase the debt load on us even more.  

So instead of using the Social Security trust fund money to invest in the stock market or other more tangible assets, they spent it all on giveaway programs and left us I.O.U.s that are in reality nothing more than debt with our own names on it.   Now they want to prop up the stock market, so they spend other money garnered from issuing more debt with our own names on it.

I don't know if there has ever been a bigger bunch of thieves in human history than the Republicrats who have looted America over the last century, at an accelerating rate since the 1970s.    Anyone foolish enough to trust them with their life savings will get robbed.   Oh, they might get a certain amount of dollars back, but those dollars will be denuded of much if not most of their buying power.

I am not even sure that the U.S. will not simply default on their bond obligations outright.  Some type of default is inevitable of course, as the debt levels that the two parties have run up simply cannot be repaid.  It is an open question as to whether the default will come through massive inflation, a new currency, or outright default.  In any of these scenarios though, what the "investor" in MyRA will get out will have less real value than what was put in.

I suspect part of the reason Obama is doing this is that he wants to borrow without limitation.   He wants to make it so that a battle about raising the debt ceiling is a battle about whether retirees get their retirement funds.   That is a lot harder to vote for than a vote to stiff the Chinese.    If millions of Americans invest in MyRA, we have seen the last real budget battle to stop increases in the debt ceiling.   We will just print dollars until the world is awash in them.   And then the music will stop.  Instead of the music stopping at a time of our choosing, foreigners will pick that time for us.

Seeing how this is so, and that this is clearly a political trap to make any effort to stop the debt increases politically untenable, why don't the Republicans try to stop him?  Because they are traitors, obviously  Anyone who isn't smart enough to have figured that out by now is a prime candidate to put their life savings in MyRA.    They don't want a real fight over raising the debt ceiling, because they have "friends" that they would like to hand out taxpayer money too as well.

A debt ceiling would force hard choices and fiscal discipline, and the Republicans are only around to pretend to be the party that stands for that, not actually stand for that.  After all, if they did not pretend to stand for that, then another political party might arise which actually stood for that, and the elites which fund both sides would have to cease their feasting.  No, the special interests will feast on the future earnings of the taxpayers until the market stops them, because the Republicrat politicians won't.

Mark is in favor of the reforms to the candidate selection system espoused at Neighbors of Arkansas.