Government "Loan"

[geelmore]

I was under the impression that the TSP was immune from "raids" by the Feds similar to what has happened to SS, and that the TSP governors were supposed to prevent that sort of thing. However, it seems that our G Fund money is going to bail the government out of its debt ceiling problem once again (see FedSmith.com article of 17 Feb 06). Anyone interested and knowledgeable on class-action law suits?

 

[Quips]

have cake and eat it too

Um, while I won't disagree that raiding the G fund is disingenuous and in a way double dealing, there aren't very many politically acceptable ways to deal with the problem.

The best way is to deal with such things is for Washington to PAY AS THEY GO. And that means to either raise taxes or to cut spending. Nobody is willing to take that kind of medicine because most Americans want something for nothing. That is the illusion we are living under at the present.

But in some ways it make sense to raid pension funds to pay for goods and services: don't corporate raiders use such tactics when it comes to hostile takeovers? Of course they do! In fact a well funded pension fund is one reason why hostile takeovers are attempted in the first place.

Many pension funds in the private sector, however, are underfunded.

Gee, wouldn't it be awful is our TSP accounts were some day confiscated to pay some small portion of the national debt? Or if Uncle Sam allowed TSP itself to be taken over/bought out or managed by some foreign concern in which we owe hundreds of billions of dollars?

Maybe that's a bit of a stretch, but crazier things have happened in life, no?

 

[Mike]

The government can do whatever it wants as long as nobody scrutinizes its actions / holds it accountable.

The Constitution doesn't matter if most people don't even know their rights guaranteed by it (see: study that showed most don't know their 1st amendment rights). Even if they did, it would only matter if people were willing to fight to defend those rights.

Apathy rules the day at the present time, so nothing really would surprise me much - be it confiscation or some other disgusting approach.

 

[Rod]

Heck, I guess we shouldn't be too concerned about it unless we plan on sitting 100 (G) for the rest of our life.