[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

SS is “too big to fail.”

Look for:

1. An early tax assessed (taken) from all 401k and IRA private-retirement accounts. They'll claim that people are retiring and forgetting that they have to pay tax when they withdraw from their private retirement and it is ruining personal finances. They'll drag a couple of actors out to play that role. The government will take 10% from all accounts to “reduce the burden” and “reduce the shock” of having to pay the taxes when retired. Of course, they'll tax again in a few years.

2. A surcharge assessed on all private-retirement accounts over a certain figure.

3. A forced rollover from all private-retirement accounts into SS. They'll promise to give you what you had in your 401k before the market crashed. People will be thrilled. But the government will default on that debt obligation just as surely as they are de facto defaulting on their debt obligation to other nations that have invested in our debt by paying them back with deflated dollars.

But SS and private-retirement accounts are as irrelevant as movement on the DJIA. Who cares if the Dow goes back to 14,000? When it pays out, it will pay out with dollars that have half the purchasing power the last time it was at 14,000.

And what good are our private-retirement accounts if the purchasing power of the money we have means we only have about half what we think we'll have.

In other words, the communists that are in charge of this country now, are so thoroughly and completely and deliberately destroying our economy, that none of this matters all that much, in a monetary sense.

[LibertarianInExile]

“1. An early tax assessed (taken) from all 401k and IRA private-retirement accounts.”

Bingo. No matter how much the government has said about Roths’ tax-free savings, there WILL be an assessment on these, too. The pool of what assets there are left is just too tempting for the Commies running this show.

I’d like to pretend I saw it all coming, but I draw a paycheck, and the fact is that anyone who’s not working for themselves is in trouble. Having wages set for you instead of being able to set your own is a surefire way to go broke in Zimbabwe. That’s the future U.S., one way or the other.

[Semperfiwife]

Heil Obama/Pelosi/Reid

[catfish1957]

Nice analysis, but #'s 2 or 3 would create a run on accounts before the change is promulgatged. Result would be self induced market crash that would make last years look like child's play

Many including myself would gladly take the early withdrawl penalty before handing our accounts (either seized or highly surcharged) to the gubmit.