An obscure SCOTUS ruling last week sets the stage for Obama to seize your 401(k)

Tapping the estimated $19.4 trillion dollars in private pension plans is every progressive socialist's wet dream. I warned you Obama had his eye on your 401(k), and now a little noticed Supreme Court ruling just gave him the green light to seize your money.

The US Supreme Court ruled last week in the unanimous, 8-page decision in Tibble v. Edison holding that employers have a duty to protect workers in their 401(k) plans from mutual funds that are too expensive or perform poorly. That is simply astonishing since there is no constitutional requirement for even government to provide social benefits.

Remember when the Constitution provided a limit to government power?

Yeah, me neither.

Now the Constitution says the government has to protect you from your own bad investment decisions. Er, SCOTUS says the government has to protect you from your own bad investment decisions. The Constitution is silent on the matter. But, emanations of penumbras, or some such rubbish dontcha know.

Monday's unanimous ruling sends a warning to employers that they now must improve their plans and it is now an obligation to project employees. This comes just in time for then the next step is government to seize private funds and prosecute employers who choose badly a fund manager. This fits perfectly just in time for the Obama administration's next assault as they prepare a landmark change of its own by issuing rules requiring that financial advisers put the interest of customers ahead of their own. This creates a very gray area wide enough to justify public seizure of pension funds under management.

Read that again, in case you didn't catch the part where the government is going to decide if your 401(k) is "good enough."

Yet this decision is even deeper. It sets the stage to JUSTIFY government seizure of private pension funds to protect pensioners. When the economy turns down and things get messy, they are placing measures in place to eliminate money in and physical physical dimension, closing all tax loopholes, shutting down the world economy with FATCA, and preparing for the final straw of Economic Totalitarianism with the Supreme Court reversing its entire construction of the Constitution to impose a duty upon employers to ensure the 401K plans perform in a world where interest rates are going negative. You really cannot make up this level of insanity.

Oh, this level of insanity is just what a guy like Bernie Sanders ordered. It's the nanny state, writ large.

Bureaucrats answerable to Sanders' cohort Elizabeth Warren will now get to decide if your 401(k) plan cuts the mustard. They'll arbitrarily set a cap on management fees, and punish any fund that exceeds their idea of a "reasonable" profit.

The punishment? Seizing the fund's assets, and forcing your money into an investment in Treasury bonds.

Then you're just another creditor to Obama, standing in line behind all the geezers on Social Security. Good luck getting paid, after all you're also collecting Social Security, and sooner or later you've made enough money.

Between the court ruling and the Obama administration's push for stronger fiduciary rules send a strong message that government can much easier seize the pension fund management industry of course to "protect the consumer."

Who's gonna protect us from the government?

You knuckleheads shoulda thought that through before you elected a committed Marxist to the presidency.

Posted at 18:41 by Chris Wysocki   [/economy]   Comments | Perm Link |
Technorati Tags: economy pension Obama 401(k) government socialism   |   Tweet