Who would’ve thought we’d have come so far, so fast. As described in this Bloomberg article, the U.S. Department of the Treasury is now officially looking at ways to force a portion of every 401k/IRA account—or some other as-yet-nonexistent, government-mandated employee benefit account—into “fixed payment annuities”, which in plain English, means that most of the money would be channeled into long-term Treasury bonds. Officially this is all about “retirement security” (sounds nice), but it would also constitute a de facto seizure of private assets in order to fund government deficits at negligible interest rates—a stealthier version of what recently happened in Argentina.