Finance advice columnist Bruce Williams rips off own column

The Dear Abby of money advice, Bruce Williams, appears to be cheating his readers and the community newspapers that pay for his column by recycling old material.

Reader R.M., November 2008:

DEAR BRUCE: I left my 401(k) with my former employer, as it seemed to be performing well. However, I am 54 years old and, examining it more closely, I saw a couple of $800 losses (quarterly) in a three-year period. I haven't called the company, thinking it might say anything just to keep my money invested. The 401(k) had almost reached $80,000. My wife says to sit tight, the economy is tough, and may get worse before it gets better. But she withdrew her $60,000 for her 401(k) a few years ago, and has no retirement money, plus we got hit hard with the penalties from the IRS. Should I contact my banker and roll the money into a no-penalty CD to gather interest? It's better than a loss. -- R.M., via e-mail

DEAR R.M.: My mailbox is full of letters similar to yours. Your 401(k), self-directed IRA or regular investments have taken a hit. Welcome to the real world. Your wife is correct, however -- the economy is tough. You may have an option at certain times to withdraw this money and if you feel more comfortable taking it out of the market, you may wish to do so. If you put the money into a CD, you will just barely stay even with, or a little ahead of, inflation, but your capital will remain intact. On the other hand, when the market recovers, you'll be the beneficiary and the money locked into a CD will not grow. My inclination would be to stay put. While the market may or may not be close to bottom as these words are written, it is going to recover. At 54, you likely have 10 to 15 years before you will need this money, and most observers think the market will recover long before then.

Reader R.M., today:

Dear Bruce: I am 54 years old, and I left my 401(k) with a former employer. However, in examining it more closely, I saw there were a couple $800 losses (quarterly) in a three-year period. I haven’t called them, thinking they might say anything just to keep my money invested with them. It had almost reached $80,000.

My wife says to sit tight, that the economy is tough and it’s not just me it’s happening to. It may get worse before it gets better. She withdrew the $60,000 for her 401(k) a few years ago and has no retirement money, plus we got hit hard with the penalties from the IRS.

Should I contact my banker and see about rolling the money into a no-penalty CD or program to gather interest instead of having a loss?

— R.M., via email

Dear R.M.: Your wife may be right in suggesting you should keep the money invested where it is. The fact that you had an $800 loss a couple of times is not a big deal. How about the times when you had a decent return?

Since you haven’t contacted your 401(k) managers, I suggest you sit down and talk with them. Your $80,000 is nothing to sneeze at, and they should make plenty of time for you. Ask what they are planning for you and how much your investment has earned in the last three or four years. After you get some answers, you can decide who is going to handle your money.

As for your wife, she took $60,000 from her 401(k) and has no retirement money. What happened to that money?

Williams appears to have gone to the trouble of slightly editing the question and then writing a new answer updated for current market conditions. Did he really think he could fool the Google machine? Is it really that hard to get new questions from readers?

We only Googled Williams because his advice was so lame, and we intended to write corrected advice. If he had offered better financial advice, he might have gotten away with the self-plagiarism.

Here comes the wealth tax

Obama plans to raid IRAs of "the rich." And now that the seal is broken, it's only a matter of time before inflation or legislation bring the wealth tax down to the few remaining middle class folks who have bothered to save for their retirement.

Click on over to Zero Hedge and read the whole thing. It's the post I was planning to write, but Tyler beat me to it. And did a better job anyway.

Obama's asset confiscation scheme is described in The Hill:

Under the plan, a taxpayer’s tax-preferred retirement account, like an IRA, could not finance more than $205,000 per year of retirement – or right around $3 million this year.

Leftists have never been good at math. You try to take out $205,000 a year out of a $3 million dollar account and you are quite likely to outlive your savings... which would make these leftists quite happy, I suppose, to see a bourgeois traitor to the revolution starving in his old age. Whether the limit is inflation-indexed isn't explained yet as details are expected next week, but it's a sure bet the inflation index won't keep up with the cost of food, housing, health care, and energy any better in the future than it has to date.

Anyone with better-than-average savings would be wise to start getting some of it outside the grasp of the U.S. government. Buy some property or some gold overseas. Sovereign Man is a good resource to start planning.

Zerohedge Quiz Response

Yesterday Zerohedge hit the big time by being mentioned in a question from Scott Solano to ECB and European Supreme Leader Mario Draghi. It's documented and well worth the read and video watch because Draghi illustrates that the ruling class doesn't give a damn about what anyone thinks. They are all-powerful oligarchs and what they say goes without question.

As ZH documents, Draghi stated

"If the Euro breaks down, and if a country leaves the Euro, it's not like a sliding door. It's a very important thing. It's a project in the European Union. That's why you have a very hard time asking people like me "what would happened if."

ZH responds with a followup question:

"If the Euro is not like a "sliding door", is there a more apt analogy of what the Euro is?"

We'll take a shot.....

You can check-out any time you like, But you can never leave!

Greenspan's Body Count: Parag Patel and Niha Patel, 970 Hedgegate Lane, York, PA

Back from a brief speaking engagement in Ireland, serial killer Alan Greenspan fell upon the Harrisburg suburb of York, Pennsylvania yesterday.

PennLive:

Police in York County released the names and additional details regarding a murder-suicide in Manchester Township earlier Tuesday in which a husband shot and killed his wife, then turned the gun on himself.

Parag Patel, 43, and his wife, Niha Patel, 41, were found dead when officers arrived at their home at 970 Hedgegate Lane just before 2 p.m. Tuesday, according to Northern York County Regional Police.

The home at 970 Hedgegate was purchased at the height of the bubble in 2008 for $411,224. Zillow now values it at $341,772, though a similar-sized house nearby sold recently for $190,700 and a much larger house immediately across the street sold for $250,000.

Greenspan's Body Count stands at 244.

Mac Daddy Propaganda

Or is it? Franky Nothaft, Chief Propagandist Economist for Freddie Mac shares a message of hope and cheer regarding the home buying landscape. Some claim it's propaganda but I disagree. All you need to hear is around 0:38: "...we expect this spring home buying season to be the best since 2007." And what happened to housing prices and the economy in general after 2007 Franky?

Fortunately Franky answers in the same video. He offers that in 2012 alone, according to the graph below presented in video, real estate added 1.5 trillion to net worth. And how much did it take away from net worth after 2007 Frank? Are we net positive or negative, or am I not smart enough to understand because I don't have an economics degree from an Ivy League school? Because according to your graph, if it's 2007 all over again, then this is probably not a great time to buy a house I can't afford anyway.

Watch for propoganda and humor purposes only.

Greenspan's Body Count goes to Ireland

The Independent (Ireland):

A support group has staged a demonstration at a suicide blackspot to highlight its claims that three people a day are taking their own lives due to "unforgivable" pressures over debt.

Support group Let's Get Together (LGT) staged a controversial city centre protest where life-size mannequins were hung from a busy bridge to highlight the suicide crisis now gripping Ireland.

[...]

But suicide support groups say that they must raise awareness and that official CSO figures indicating up to 700 people take their own lives each year are an underestimate.

"The true figure, from what we have been able to garner from suicide support groups around the country, is somewhere between 900 and 1,100. And the problem is that it is rising all the time," said Pat Buckley of LGT.

But Mr Buckley, who lost two of his brothers to suicide, said that there has been a clear shift from younger to older males opting to take their own lives.

"Young men aged from 18 to 30 were always the greatest risk group. But we are seeing a significant increase in the number of men and women aged from 30 to 55 now taking their own lives.

"All the indications are that they cannot take the pressure of debt repayments and having their incomes wiped out by the Celtic Tiger collapse."

Paul Krugman, Ben Bernanke, and Barack Obama, whose solution to the debt crisis is more debt, could not be reached for comment.

Ode to gold

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways
The Bernank can printeth thee not, hard as he may try
Thou hireth not overpaid asshats like Meg Whitman to manage thy business
Thou diluteth me not with employee stock options
Thy expense ratio is a sock drawer and a .44 magnum