Friday, July 02, 2010


It Takes A Pillage
Retirement: Argentina nationalized private pension funds in 2008 under the guise of shielding them from the economic meltdown. But the funds have been used by lawmakers. That couldn't happen here, could it?

Socialist President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner said the state was protecting private retirement from "policies of plunder." By moving tens of billions from the private sector and placing it in the public fisc, she claimed to be providing "an example" for others to follow as the global financial crisis heated up....

...based on what she had read in the Annual Report of the White House Task Force on the Middle Class, Connie Hair wrote in Human Events that "the radical solution most favored by Big Labor is the seizure of private 401(k) plans for government disbursement."

The selling point for these plans would be much like the fiction that was peddled in Argentina: The funds would go into a pot that the government would protect from economic decline before they are distributed to retirees....