How can we be expected to set aside money, wages, and earning over our entire career through vehicles that ride along with the stock market when the market itself goes up and down faster and more frequently than most rides at Six Flags Great Adventure.

It seems that most companies expect their employees to put part of their money back into a 401k plan or IRA plan. The promise for doing this is a good return on investment, growth and you get to shelter part of your wages from taxes.

However once you put it in, the money is not yours anymore. You can’t touch it or move it without paying heavy taxes and penalties, but I suppose you can look at it.

“Just look at how much money I might have in 5 years if I don’t die, and the market doesn’t implode….nice.”

Meanwhile hedge funds and investment banks get to play around with your money through the funds you have been duped into investing in. Meanwhile, they are free to build up some companies and destroy others on a whim, in hopes of eliminating competition and consolidating power for their friends. While naturally making some money for themselves along the way.

Can you expect your money remain safe over the course of the next 20 to 50 years?

However if I just held back cash in a personal stock account or invested into real assets like gold, silver, land, property, or even put some money into ownership a local business. You could even buy a cow and have a better return and more freedom and control over your investments.

Now I am much more free to ride the markets up and down with my money, and I can move it, sell it, transfer it to whomever, whenever I want. I can tie a rope around my investment and walk it down the road if I please. This is starting to feel much more like true financial freedom.

Without full control of your money, to buy and sell, and enter and exit contracts at will, how could you expect to be safe, secure, or free.

There is however, much more risk involved when you have freedom. With real freedom comes the freedom to think and do stupid things.

“But it’s our wits that makes us men.” - Malcom Wallace from Braveheart

If you live your life in a box, insulated from every difficult decision, passing off all the choices and options on to others who would more gladly take the risks with your time and money, in exchange for the promise of a modest return at a later date. Then perhaps you do deserve to be conned, swindled and led to slaughter.

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Benjamin Franklin wasn’t only talking about personal safety that we all hope to get from the Department of Homeland Security. To live truly free, you have to be able to put it all on the line. Sometimes you need to go ALL in, not just 10% over 25 years paid in 3 times a year, and matched by your employer. And God forbid, if you need to get it ALL OUT, should you really have to pay a premium to take back what used to be yours.

It makes absolutely no sense to give another penny to a group of individuals who has proved time and time again to be working solely for their own interests. A group who has been convicted of countless frauds and who has gambled away lifetimes worth of money.

What they know, that you don’t are the rules to the game. The economy works like a casino. Given enough time the house always wins. The trick is keeping you entertained long enough to let the house suck you dry, while giving you the impression that you are actually winning something.

Guaranteed, the individuals managing the funds you invest have never stepped foot in the city or state where the money came from.

When you invest into large money markets, pensions, or lifetime retirement funds you are willingly transporting your money out of the place where it came from and into the accounts of Wall Street money managers. Who will no doubt lend it back to your municipality at interest when your local tax revenues fall short of the budget. Thanks for the “bailout”.

However, taking control of you money is dangerous. Like the first time you hold a gun in your hand. All of a sudden you have an enormous power to suddenly create, or destroy. You could become rich, or you could lose everything, but hopefully somewhere in the middle. With great power comes even greater responsibility, but there is no nation of people that has ever earned their freedom while sitting on the sidelines.

Money is more than just means to move through life. It’s a representation of your time and labor. Every dollar you earn is a piece of your life spent to obtain it. It belongs to you, your family, and your community. You should not give even one penny away without careful consideration for who it goes to and what it means to you, because its much more just a penny. It’s minutes and seconds of your life that you can never get back.

When you pass on, you can leave behind some remnants of a market fund thats been taxed 50% and divided up after fee’s and etc. Or you maybe just leave behind Betsy the Cow, I’d like to see them try to come take half then.

Buy something real, while you still can.

Now this is a guaranteed rape job.

In a short conversation this noontime that CNBC apparently has omitted from their archives (Why’s that folks?) Rick Santelli was talking about a potential to effectively force money into the Treasury market.

Where would they get this?

From your 401k and IRA accounts!

From Businessweek:

The U.S. Treasury and Labor Departments will ask for public comment as soon as next week on ways to promote the conversion of 401(k) savings and Individual Retirement Accounts into annuities or other steady payment streams, according to Assistant Labor Secretary Phyllis C. Borzi and Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Mark Iwry, who are spearheading the effort.

Let me tell you what this is – it is an attempt to prevent the collapse of the Treasury market!

Forcing people into Treasuries as an “annuity” is exactly what Social Security allegedly is. Except that Treasury stole the money that was collected in FICA taxes and spent it!

Guess what? They’ll do that here too – you’re going to “invest” in Treasuries which of course are effectively a CALL option on the future taxing ability of the government.

The problem is that with an aging population and the immigrant problem (illegal immigrants that is), along with offshoring, the aggregate wage base will drop and thus this is the most dangerous investment of all!

What’s even worse is that the government has intentionally suppressed Treasury yields during this crisis (and will keep doing so by various means, including manipulating the CPI – the “inflation index” – as they have for the last 30 years) so as to guarantee that you lose over time compared to actual purchasing power.

THIS HAS BEEN THE CASE SINCE THE 1980s AND IT WILL NOT CHANGE!

I have been talking about this for quite some time and recall writing a Ticker on it a year or more ago, although I can’t find the entry immediately.

Let me be clear:

I have no quarrel with the government mandating that you have a choice in your IRA or 401k account to buy short-duration Treasuries – much like the “G” fund that government and civil-service workers have.

But – “choices” have a funny way of turning into mandates, and this looks to me like a raw admission that Treasury knows it will not be able to sell its debt in the open market – so they will effectively tax you by forcing your “retirement” money to buy them!

This may be the only way for Treasury to hold down interest rates to something reasonable in the intermediate term, but doing so will instantaneously remove a major source of funding for the stock market – that is, the monthly and quarterly inflows from retirement accounts.

You can bet this won’t be good for you, the ordinary American.

You can also bet that once such an “option” is made available there is a very high probability of the government doing things that either promote or simply don’t stand in the way of another stock market crash as a means of “herding” your money into Treasuries – so they can blow it – all under the guise of being allegedly “safe”.

Of course this begs the question – what if the government can’t pay down the road when you retire, just as they can’t pay on a forward basis with Social Security and Medicare?

This “proposal” can only mean one thing – The Treasury smells smoke. Maybe you should pay attention to what they’re huffing!

And before you say “oh they’d never do that” I want you to read this:

Here is a warning to us all. The Argentine state is taking control of the country’s privately-managed pension funds in a drastic move to raise cash.

My fear is that governments in the US, Britain, and Europe will display similar reflexes. Indeed, they have already done so. The forced-feeding of banks with fresh capital – whether they want it or not – and the seizure of the Fannie/Freddie mortgage giants before they were in fact in trouble (in order to prevent a Chinese buying strike of US bonds and prevent a spike in US mortgage rates), shows that private property can be co-opted – or eliminated – with little due process if that is required to serve the collective welfare.

Any questions?

PS: If the video shows up I’ll update this ticker…. and if you’re wondering what hammered the dollar starting at about 9:00 today, this is probably it. Such a “move” would free the government to further abuse the issuance of Treasuries rather than take necessary austerity steps and places us even further down the road toward a political and economic collapse.