◼ link - RUSH: By the way, TIME Magazine headline. Snerdley listen to this. Man, when I'm prescient, I am prescient. I did not know this. Six hours ago, TIME Magazine headline: "Fiscal Cliff: Why Congress Might Have to Mess with the 401(k)." Now, I want to take you back. It was October 28th of 2008. It was before the 2008 election on this program. It was an economist from the New School, Teresa Ghilarducci, who first suggested to Congress the idea going after 401(k)s....
George Miller was told by this babe, the government's losing $80 billion by allowing you to deduct from your gross income, your taxable income, whatever you contribute to your 401(k), and they wanted to take that away. They had a hearing. They actually had a hearing on this back in 2008 where they heard from this professor. She appeared and she said, "I've got a better plan.
"What we want to do, we want to take your 401(k) at its August level, before the crash. We'll give you that equivalent and put it in your Social Security account, essentially, and we're going to invest that money that we take from your retirement account, your 401(k), at its August level. We're going to buy government bonds with it, which will guarantee you 3% -- and then we will require that you put 5% of your pay into your 401(k) although it's not yours anymore.
"The government owns it. They will manage it. They will take care of it, and then when your retirement day comes you'll get your Social Security check and part of your check will be whatever your 401(k) monthly payout is, after 3% of growth every year under the stewardship of the government." That was the deal. People went nuts over it. They went nuts over it, just as they went nuts over losing the deductibility of their credit card interest back in '86. Just as they're gonna go nuts when they lose the deductibility of their mortgage.
Well, that's gonna happen.
You mark my words.
That's already being floated out there as being on the table as part of the cliff deal. Not this year. Not this year. There will be a second part of the cliff deal in the first quarter of 2013. They're floating the idea of reducing the mortgage interest deduction for just the very poor, eliminating it not for everybody but just the very poor. But this 401(k) plan, TIME Magazine's out now with a headline six hours ago saying (summarized), "Oh, it's just such a shame. It's just such a shame. The government might have to look at your 401(k). They might have to mess with it," and it's this plan that was introduced four years ago....
