If you thought Obamacare was terrifying, just wait until you read about what President Obama's regulatory agencies are planning to do with your retirement savings.
According to an alarming report in the Wall Street Journal, government regulators at the Labor Department will be implementing new rules at the end of the year that will eventually force private retirement investments into government accounts. How? By making private investment options, specifically IRAs, too burdensome, a liability and expensive. Bolding is mine.
President Obama’s regulators aren’t slowing down, alas. And on Wednesday they unveiled another part of their plan to push Americans out of private investment accounts and into government-run plans.
The Department of Labor says its so-called fiduciary rule will make financial advisers act in the best interests of clients. What Labor doesn’t say is that the rule carries such enormous potential legal liability and demands such a high standard of care that many advisers will shun non-affluent accounts. Middle-income investors may be forced to look elsewhere for financial advice even as Team Obama is enabling a raft of new government-run competitors for retirement savings. This is no coincidence.
Labor’s new rule will start biting in January as the President is leaving office. Under the rule, financial firms advising workers moving money out of company 401(k) plans into Individual Retirement Accounts will have to follow the new higher standards. But Labor has already proposed waivers from the federal Erisa law so new state-run retirement plans don’t have the same regulatory burden as private employers do.
Like Obamacare, which made providing private health insurance plans so expensive that major companies dumped employees into the government exchanges, these Obama administration regulations will make retirement savings through private sources so burdensome, it will force employees into government accounts.
Considering how the government has handled Social Security over the years, this is a terrifying scenario that will ultimately lead to 1) individuals saving less for retirement 2) the government raiding retirement accounts to pay for other programs 3) more government dependency.
Congress, call your offices.
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