GPS, I understand your 401k perspective. Personally, my pittance of a 401k (I put in only what receives matching funds from The Borg, my employer) is in the modern cyber-equivalent of your grandfather's box. It is the least-suck option I see at the present. Loose 5% through inflation (stealth tax) or lose 50% through banksters and other thieves manipulating the stock market.
We must also remember where/how money is created today. Near as I can tell, and if anyone has a better explanation I'd like to hear it, this is how money is created in the US and what is happening:
The Federal Reserve, a collection of privately owned commercial banks, loans into existence money by telling the computer "you have more 0's now." Let's say 1st Bank of Bumfuq is on the board. 1st Bank now borrows this money from the Fed at 0.1% interest and now has more "money" in it's computer. 1st Bank takes that money and buys U.S. Treasury debt (bonds). The U.S. Treasury must pay interest on this money (bonds) at 2-3%, currently, and rising. To get the money for that, you, I, iggy, little Iglet, Shim and their grandchildren must work at our little jobs and send a significant portion of the proceeds (representing our time) to the U.S. government so the government can repay the 1st Bank for money it got for almost nothing from the Fed which made the money from nothing (literally). Now, the U.S. government takes the money it received from selling the Bonds and buys worthless debt that the banks have been selling to MegaFund. MegaFund bought all this bad paper from the banks because the U.S. government said it was a sure thing that illegal aliens with no SS number would pay back a half million dollars on a 4 bedroom house in SoCal. Now that the paper is worthless, the U.S. is buying it from MegaFund with the money borrowed from 1st Bank. MegaFund now has the money and doesn't want more worthless mortgage backed securities (MBS), so MegaFund is now buying stocks instead with that money, pushing the stock market sky high. This is the first round of the money, which eventually pushes the price of everything else sky high (inflation).
So, in summary:
MegaFund: Got rid of the worthless MBS' at face value, now holds corporate stock.
1st Bank: Holds bonds from the U.S. government that will have to be paid by all of us at higher and higher interest rates, despite getting the money for practically nothing at all.
Iggy, Igget, Shim and the rest of us: We get to work our whole lives and give larger and larger amounts of our work to the government so the government can give it to 1st Bank of Bumfuq.
The part about us losing our 401k's, IRA's, etc., is to get more money available to pay 1st Bank. I think that about sums up what is happening right now. Anyone have a better grasp on this?
