Obama Encourages Companies to Underfund Pensions

I didn’t listen to the endless drone called the Obama State of the Union Address.  It’s just more of Obama reading lies from a teleprompter.  Lies written by privileged frat boy speech writers who are totally unaware of the suffering in America.

After putting the country through sequestration, and signing into law the horrific Ryan/Murray budget, slashing veteran’s pensions and ending emergency unemployment benefits, I did want to see what was in the SOTU. 

 

It has been reported that in the State of the Union Address President Obama said he was raising the minimum wage to $10.10 through executive order.  Actually, not one person has or will receive a raise in minimum wage through his worthless executive order.  The order only applies to workers who will be hired by government contractors some time in the future. 

According to one reporter covering the SOTU speech, “an unnamed White House source said the minimum wage issue is a win-win for Obama.  If congress decides to raise the minimum wage, it’ll be Obama’s idea, and if they don’t, Democrats have something to run on in 2014.” 

Yes, whether there is an increase in minimum wage, not to be mistaken with a living wage, isn’t important because either way it’s a win-win for Obama.

Obama has come up with retirement accounts for the educated poor, F/K/A the working poor.  Obama and Wall Street came up with a new retirement account just for you.  The retirement account is called myRA, get it?  It’s a take off of IRA.

Some years ago the Senate enacted a law that prohibits students and their families who have student loan debt from ever being absolved of that debt. The law pertains to student loans, both government backed and private, and states the debt plus interest cannot be discharged due to bankruptcy, disability or death.  The interest rate on those government backed loans is dictated by congress and is currently around 6% and can change on their whim. 

So because of that student loan debt and the lack of jobs, you may have trouble saving for your retirement so voila myRA.  Obama and Wall Street have come up with a retirement plan designed just for you.  Wall Street isn’t interested in investors with less than $10,000 to invest so myRA is the ticket for you.

Through these myRA’s you can save $25.00 a week AFTER taxes that is put into an extremely low interest account in your name.  One of the perks on your myRA retirement account is you don’t have to pay taxes on the interest you earn on your savings, isn’t that generous? 

When and if your account reaches $15,000 of your own money plus interest, you must invest it in the stock market and pay whatever fees are applicable to Wall Street brokers.   Your hard earned, 100% your money myRA will then be laid to waste by the voracious wolfs on Wall Street.

This is Damian Paletta’s take at the Wall Street Journal:

While any savings would accumulate over time, the low-risk investments would not deliver whopping returns. If they are pegged to the Thrift Savings Plan Government Securities Investment Fund, they would have had an annual return of 1.47% in 2012, or an average annual return of 3.61% from 2003 through 2012.

Here are nine things to know about myRA accounts:

1.) The accounts would be aimed at workers whose employers do not offer traditional retirement accounts like 401(k)s.

2.) The accounts would function like a Roth IRA and have government backing like a savings bond. This would give the investments principal protection, meaning the account balance cannot go down.

3.) There will be an initial pilot program for companies that agree to enroll by the end of this year. Workers can invest if they make less than $191,000 a year.

4.) Businesses will not administer or run the accounts. They will simply offer them to their employees if they decide to participate.

5.) There will not be a tax penalty if the investments are withdrawn.

6.) Initial investments could begin at $25, and subsequent investments could be as low as $5. The idea is to have investments added through payroll deductions.

7.) Accounts can be taken by the employee from one job to the next, and they can be rolled into an Individual Retirement Account at any time.

8.) The accounts would have the same variable interest rate return as the Thrift Savings Plan Government Securities Investment Fund accounts that federal employees enroll in.

9.) Once someone’s account grows to $15,000, the myRA must be rolled over into a private-sector Roth IRA.

Yeah, what a great retirement plan for you educated poor with college loan debt that can NEVER be expunged even if you die.  You’re paying the government over 6% interest on your student loan and they can’t even pay more than 1.5% interest on your myRA retirement account?

If  that’s not insulting enough, the Democrats in the U.S. Senate have come up with a plan to restore the emergency unemployment benefits for 3 months.  The Democrats plan is to screw over those people who participate in a pension plan offered through their employer.  Honest, I’m not making this up, that’s the Democrats’ plan.  From the Business Insider:

Now, however, Democrats have offered a new way to pay for a three month extension of unemployment benefits: pension smoothing. This would reduce the amount that companies have to pay into their pension funds each year. This gives companies higher profits in the short-term, boosting tax revenue for the government.

But in the long-term, companies will have to increase their pension contributions, which will reduce their profits and decrease future tax revenues. It also allows companies to underfund their pensions, increasing the risk they will need help covering them from the government. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) rightly labels this a gimmick. It doesn't actually offset the cost of the unemployment extension and only makes the pension system more unstable.

For a three month extension, they are willing to put your private pensions on the table.  This doesn’t offset the cost of the 3 month extension, but does make the pension system more unstable. Who is representing the American people? 

How, is this good for America and Americans?  Who are they looking out for?  What is going on?

Here’s something interesting.  You may read whatever you want into this.  Did you know that all the information the government has been collecting on every citizen in the United States is being collected by Israelis?  Isn’t it weird that all that information in that huge building in Utah is owned by Israelis?

According to James Bamford:

What is less well-known is that AT&T and Verizon handed “the bugging of their entire networks — carrying billions of American communications every day” to two companies founded in Israel. Verint and Narus, as they are called, are “superintrusive — conducting mass surveillance on both international and domestic communications 24/7,” and sifting traffic at “key Internet gateways” around the US.

Virtually all US voice and data communications and much from the rest of the world can be remotely accessed by these companies in Israel, which Bamford describes as “the eavesdropping capital of the world.” Although there is no way to prove cooperation, Bamford writes that “the greatest potential beneficiaries of this marriage between the Israeli eavesdroppers and America’s increasingly centralized telecom grid are Israel’s intelligence agencies.

Did you know that the nominee for the number two position at the Federal Reserve to take Janet Yellin’s place was the head of the IsraeliCentral Bank? 

President Barack Obama named Israel's former central banker to be Janet Yellen's right-hand man at the Federal Reserve.

Stanley Fischer is Obama's pick to be vice chairman of the Federal Reserve when Yellen succeeds Ben Bernanke as Fed chair in February. Fischer served as governor of the Bank of Israel from 2005 to 2013, guiding its economy through the global financial crisis. He also was vice chairman of Citigroup from 2002 to 2005. Plus, he's worked at the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and taught economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago.

It just seems strange, and makes me wonder if the two are related.

How is any of the above good for America?  How is any of that good for US citizens?  Who will stop the Obama White House from destroying the entire retirement structure of the United States?

Wake up America.

By Patricia Baeten