Obama is nuts. His economics is incoherent. This subject does not belong anywhere near the agenda in current circumstances.

I love it that you participate here regularly and argue with logic instead of the really ridiculous, even laughable, Republican politician’s rhetoric.

However, harrumph, I don’t know what you think is incoherent, so I can’t agree, disagree or anything else.

After reading some other posts…

As I understand it, and that’s not saying much for this particular issue, it’s required for employers to set these accounts up, but that an employee can opt out. So, it’s not forced on anybody. Second, we saw it mentioned earlier with 401K and now with IRA, so I’m guessing it’s either going through some kind of debate about how best to do it. Third, I can’t imagine how it relates to taxes. It doesn’t appear to create a new kind of retirement account, so the only big thing it seems to introduce is required creation of these accounts with electronic deposit to push it’s use.

As to whether pushing savings at a time like this is wise: that might be the best argument for hesitating. But, as the plan is apparently optional, it doesn’t seem to be a big problem. The Devil is often in the details, so I’d want to keep watching to see how flexible it is or if people are going to be forced into something they might regret. Flexibility is key for people who don’t have tons of dough to start with.

Folks who are talking, at this point in the collapse of the markets, about yet another govt program to incentivize stock ownership by the sorts of people who have no business being in stocks, can really have only one end in mind. They have concluded that there are already so many voters tied into the stock markets with 401Ks, IRAs, etc., that these markets cannot be allowed to implode down to DJIAs of <1000. They figure the best way to keep prices from deflating rapidly is the promise, into the indefinite future, of all that money flowing in on the buy side as millions of workers save for their retirements.

It’s not going to work, not even in the short term as a desperate gambit to at least smooth the coming crash into a soft landing. That they would propose such a thing now, when propping up the markets seems the only sense such a scheme would make, is to inspire the opposite of confidence in the future of those markets, and therefore to defeat the very purpose of the scheme.

I forsee the U.S. Bankruptcy Code priority of claims booklet being on the NY Times best seller list for 2009-10, but not for financial corporations deemed too massive to stand before a judge and testify under oath as to their real balance sheets.

An insolvency problem can’t be cured when everyone on Wall Street and both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue is pretending that it’s a liquidity problem. (h/t to Nouriel Roubini)

Paying more into social security would probably not be viable if for no other reason than half the country is convinced it is bankrupt.

Is it just me or does this sound like yet another giveaway to the banks?

Investment fees anyone?

This was the other factor manipulating people to suspend reason and buy into the housing bubble. With even certificate of deposit returns at less than 2% the possibility of saving for a downpayment on a home or a retirement account was impossible and downright ludicrous compared to the rapidly escalating costs of real estate.

Obama is nuts. His economics is incoherent. This subject does not belong anywhere near the agenda in current circumstances.

Obama’s programs to deal with the economy are too little and poorly structured and he keeps bringing up these things like the Orszag plan and these accounts when the economy is falling apart. I agree incoherent, confused, no sense of priorities, a real mess.

I hear your fatigue. This is tomorrow’s question.

thanks. sincerely appreciate your work on this and regret shortness (meaning tone not length) of my comments. just really tired and fuzzy headed now. please give me hell tomorrow.