Steve Forbes aims his rhetorical rifle at Poland’s political leaders in the latest issue of Forbes magazine.
Poland has pulled a destructive stunt worthy of Argentina. It is seizing half of the Polish people’s private retirement funds. All government bonds in these pension-plan portfolios are being forcibly transferred to the government. Since the bonds are no longer held by investors, the government is declaring that the national debt has been reduced by the face value of those securities. Neat trick, including the spin on this Soviet-style seizure: The government is calling the nationalization a “pension overhaul.” The ghosts of Stalin and Lenin must be smiling.
Barack Obama must be wondering why he hadn’t thought of something like this and may be tempted to try such a scheme here. It’s so delicious to a socialist: Seize Treasury bonds and declare them null and void. Some Washington socialists, a.k.a. Democrats, have already made noises about getting their hands on a portion of the assets held by individuals in IRAs and 401(k)s. The Administration floated such an idea earlier this year, suggesting that the size of these retirement plans be restricted. …
… Believers in free markets and the rule of law in Poland are reeling. “This is the largest nationalization in Poland since 1946 [when a Soviet-installed Communist puppet regime seized large swaths of the Polish economy],” rightly exclaimed one fund manager. This thievery violates Poland’s constitutional guarantee of property rights. But who pays attention to constitutions these days? Certainly not the Obama Administration and much of our federal judiciary. Poland’s rationale: Even though the money for the private pensions was deducted from workers’ paychecks, it really didn’t belong to them, because if the private plans hadn’t existed, the government would have taken the money for the government plan; ipso facto, the workers would never have had it anyway.
