Comments on: Brother, Can You Spare a 401(k)?

By: anonymess

anonymess — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 15:34:47 +0000

Good post. The answer to you is, “No, Sister, I can’t…” I definitely can’t spare my 401(K), and eventually I may not even be able to spare a dime, or at least the price of a Starbucks cup of coffee. Time will tell. In the meantime, between the monstrous and still unfolding domestic and global economic turmoil and the befuddling myriad of quick fixes coming out of DC daily, it feels like I am on the world’s largest and scariest roller coaster ride, without a seat belt and with sweaty and slippery palms, and am about to head into the upside-down part of the ride. I just don’t know if I will be able to hold on.

By: MarkD

MarkD — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 15:23:22 +0000

Islam is a malignant political ideology, not a religion. My granddaughter will never be a Muslim.

As for the 401K thing, the instant this is even proposed, my money leaves the country, never to return. Surely some smart Swiss or Cayman banker is preparing for this, now. Roosevelt basically confiscated private gold holdings – well, the smart people kept theirs. I’m sure that they’ll make foreign bank accounts illegal, but my 401k will have been spent. What account?

History teaches a lot, but you need to pay attention.

By: vivo

vivo — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 07:47:29 +0000

5. American Muslim:

“You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”

Abraham Lincoln said this.

By: myth buster

myth buster — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 05:40:10 +0000

Mohammed be damned! May hot coals be poured on his head! As for me, I will never submit to Islam! I will never pay tribute to Islam! If it were up to me, I’d have nuked Mecca a long time ago. Jesus is Lord, and He is returning soon. So no, my grandchildren will not be Muslims, I can assure you of that, because I will not have any grandchildren, or if I do, Islam will have ceased to exist.

By: Jerry

Jerry — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 04:53:07 +0000

Re #17 Concerned Citizen: You raise an interesting possibility. Do you have any indication this might happen or is 401K confiscation just one of hundreds of possible scenarios? You can cause a run on 410Ks, you know, and economic collapse can become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

By: Concerned Citizen

Concerned Citizen — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 23:59:10 +0000

Don’t bother worrying about your 401k’s. Obama’s going to make you an offer you can’t refuse in about six months, when he realizes the Chinese and Japanese have stopped buying our Treasuries. The most convenient source of money — YOU 401k holders.

Your accounts are down 40%, so he’ll “offer” to roll them over to the new 401-O accounts that are 100% Treasuries paying 3%. There are $2 trillion available for this program. You’ll be able to keep them tax free if you do this and he’ll also top you up by 20%, but he’ll decide when, if ever you get to take it out. That is only if the dollar is worth anything.

If you don’t play ball, you get hit with a 50% tax bill payable this year. I’d stay away from the stock market while President Marx is still the boss.

A sack of gold coins in a hole in the backyard is looking like a better investment every day!

By: Mina Bender

Mina Bender — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 23:42:31 +0000

The eloquence with which you write, leaves me in envy of a quality I personally lack. I am in love with your mind. I imagine you sipping coffee and sitting at a desk injected with the influence of solstice light along its ecliptic path,softly creeping through an old window pane, and only augmented with Edison before and after its daily arc. Your visual distractions are slight from about,glancing through the frame into a yard of tranquility,and only enough to give you pause when you choose, but not disturbingly unwanted.The living portrait you have framed for your viewing is of your most comforting impressions year in and year out. A slight titillation causing you to think as you ponder the silence that you demand and that which has allowed your mind the halt necessary to formulate your thoughts.
Your insight is much more than from academia… abstract,of personal intuitiveness, derived both from childhood, adult experience, and disallowing any destruction that might have been caused by mediocracy. Ah but where were you in my more self destructive years?

By: Kirly

Kirly — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 21:56:16 +0000

Could the plight of our grandparents and great-grandparents become our own?

As far as retirement goes, it already has become our own. With our 401ks already cut in half and still dwindling, we may end up dependent solely on the government if we ever find ourselves forced to retire. Unless we experience a dramatic revival soon, I and those of a similar age (mid 40s) will probably quite literally work until I drop dead of old age. That is only if our employers don’t force us to retire so they can hire younger, less expensive, people.

I don’t know what course to take in this environment.

By: newton

newton — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 20:13:49 +0000

“This may be a profound event, possibly on the order of the breakdown of the Roman empire.”

It probably will happen in a similar manner. I can sense that, in a few years, a couple of regions of this country are going to demand their independence from Washington, with the Federal government reacting in such a manner that a new civil war will commence. With the country as vulnerable as it will be then (if not now), attacks on any aspect of its infrastructure will surely grind much, if not all activity to a halt. Imagine an electromagnetic pulse attack, for example: that alone would, in theory, set this country back at least 100 years – to the time before Edison.

The New Dark Ages are going to be darker than anyone could ever imagine. No wonder guns and ammo are selling like hotcakes!

By: Nolanimrod

Nolanimrod — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 18:05:47 +0000

Excellent post. Wonderful platform upon which to build your discussion. But I’m prejudiced – I can hear Bessie Smith singing it as I write.

As you state, FDR was a lot more out-there on the left than people knew. Or know. I read a speech he gave, I think at Cornell, in which he decried the fact that people with a lot of wealth could employ it as they saw fit, rather than with an eye to the common good. Sound familiar?

I have felt for about the last ten years that things were not good and there was a reckoning awaiting. Things were just too frantic. My little shotgun double in New Orleans, for which I paid 32K in 1996, was suddenly “worth” about 120K in 2004. Huh? And the job creation numbers – they were announced not with glee but seemingly with a sense that disaster was again averted.

It was like driving a car at redline: one little piece of grit in the oil pump and the engine explodes.

And it did.

This may be a profound event, possibly on the order of the breakdown of the Roman empire.