The Great American Do-It-Yourself Retirement Fraud, Brought to You By Big Finance & Co.

[Egalitarian Thug]

42. That just demonstrates the problem. There are these peculiar institutions we call banks that

have been granted a unique license (the legal creation of money) in exchange for the vital purposes you mention, but, it is a mistake to think that they pay for these works. They don't pay because the money created for the purpose is not theirs to begin with. Even the reserve requirement is not their money, it belongs to the depositors.

Banking in and of itself is a necessary evil (there are many alternatives to the system we currently employ, but that's a whole 'nother thread), but the TBTF monstrosities that have usurped the name bank do not fulfill that vital role and have become entirely extractive organizations that prosper by preventing the very function that banks must fill to keep the economy working.

The reason that the ERISA laws (rules?) were changed to transfer ownership from the workers to the owners was because the pensions were remarkably successful and the owners wanted those huge, profitable piles of other people's money for themselves. We seem to suffer from national Alzheimer’s syndrome as we tend to forget everything that ever happened before we notice it. Often, we deny that what was ever existed. Deferred compensation can be quite useful when subject to reasonable rules and clear ownership by those that make create the asset, namely, the employees.