Sunday, March 1, 2015

Obama Wants New Regulations That Will Control and Limit How You Can Invest Your IRA and 401(k) Money (It May Even Result in Your Account Getting Closed)

Jonathon M. Trugman writes:
The key to the White House’s interference is in its nuanced language.
Currently, a broker may make a recommendation that must be “suitable” for retirement account assets such as 401(k)s and IRAs.
However, the president wants to take it a step further and mandate that it be in an investor’s “fiduciary best interest.”
The administration surely knows that commission rates and fees on Wall Street have never been better for the consumer, and to pretend to be able to offer even cheaper rates seems disingenuous.
It also opens a huge can of worms.
What if an investor who has been successful with Apple wants to buy 100 more shares of the tech giant for his or her self-directed IRA?
Does the administration really want a broker to interfere because in the broker’s opinion it isn’t in the “best interest” of the investor?
It’s all about control. It’s your money, America. The system functions quite well. Adding more pages of red tape will not improve performance, but it just may get your broker to drop your account, just as many credit lines were closed after Dodd-Frank passed.

5 comments:

  1. I think is the first step they will take to try and implement a complete and total state controlled pension program.

    These people just don't get it. They will never win in the long run because they simply are not intelligent enough to make any of this actually work. The people that are intelligent enough to make something like this work are also intelligent enough to know that it will never last long enough to be worth attempting.

    That leaves them at either promoting slavery, or them creating police state that is just the same as slavery.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. People who cannot even manage to operate within a budget now want to run pension money? That will never fly.

      However, I suspect that there is likely to be some crony capitalist manipulation going on here behind the scenes. Google has close ties to Wealthfront, for example, and it is quite likely that these "bot" program managers will be used as a vector to gain control over portfolio allocations inside IRAs and 401Ks. Once people are coerced into Wealthfront-type programs via regulations, they can then be counted upon to maintain healthy allocations to US ETFs and US Govt bonds, esp. since these schemes are rule-following "modern portfolio theory" based schemes which can be gamed by deep-pocketed tape-painting entities like the Fed.

      Delete
  2. If you like your IRA, you can keep your IRA.

    ReplyDelete
  3. If they can seize gold, they can seize 401K.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Like health care modifications all leading to single payer, these modifications appear to be leading to the government wet dream of only allowing tax-advantaged retirement accounts to invest in Treasuries.

    All government, all the time, baby!

    ReplyDelete