Confiscation of our retirement savings?

Dear Ms. Savage: Thank you for the financial organizer. My wife & I do have an intervivos trust, nevertheless, this may be handy.
The real reason I’m responding is because I have a question. By reading between the lines on several publications, their are unsubstantiated(aren’t they all) rumors about our elected buffoons confiscating our IRA’s and Roth IRA’s. Of course this is for our country’s good and, quite naturally for our own good. They possibly could also steal from our bank savings accounts, much like Cyprus. Do you have any comments or suggestions? I guess we should remember that old adage, “Rumors are untrue until they are officially denied.” Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Terry Says:  This is just one of those widely circulated “urban myths”.  The Savage Truth is that the government is already “stealing” from your bank account through the process of printing more money, which devalues the worth of the money you have saved.  The name for this is INFLATION!  And even at “only” 3 percent annual inflation, the value (spending power) of your money is cut in half in 25 years!   That’s what could eventually destroy your retirement savings, and it is why you need some investments in a diversified stock portfolio — which has never failed to keep up with inflation over a 20 year period, with dividends reinvested.

Sure, down the road any government could “confiscate” private property.  That’s what happened in Germany in the 1930s, and in the old Soviet Union under the Stalinist era, and in Cuba in the 1950s.  Those were outright confiscations.  Most governments prefer to “confiscate” in the form of higher taxes or the stealth of inflation. Let’s hope the United States doesn’t ever come to either extreme.