The Government is Taking Your Pension

In March 2010, I wrote to you about how governments are taking people's hard earned pension plans. For most people, in most countries, you have some form of your pension privately (your own savings) and some form promised to you by your government.

This year politicians have raided the "government provided" pension plans of their people all around the world.  Here are a few real examples:

1. Ireland announced last week that it would use the country’s €24bn National Pensions Reserve Fund “to support the exchequer’s funding programme”.
2. Telegraph writes: "Portugal has raided €5.6bn (£4.8bn) of pension fund assets in a controversial scramble to meet its deficit targets."
3. The Obama administration will begin to tap federal retiree programs to help fund operations after the government lost its ability Monday to borrow more money from the public, adding urgency to efforts in Washington to fashion a compromise over the debt.

Next is your private pension plans and we already have examples:

1. Hungarian government to claw $15bn of private pension funds back to the state system.
2. Christina Kirchner, President of Argentina, in 2008 seized her citizens’ private pension funds.
3. The US government is drafting legislation for “Guaranteed Retirement Accounts” (GRAs) in which private company pensions and private accounts of citizens are absorbed into a government system whereby Washington then decides how much money you get back.  This is justified on the basis that private pensions have been tax advantaged for years and therefore are already quasi-government property.

There is an old saying that goes, "rich or poor, king or pauper, if you can't defend what you have- you have nothing".

Or you can follow this link and watch a YOUTUBE from George Carlin [WARNING: as is typical in his shows, he uses a lot of very offensive language.  But, if you can be mature enough to look beyond that- you just might learn something].