My knee jerk reaction (and I imagine most peoples) is "no, they would never do that!". Because that would be directly taking the money I have personally saved for retirement and giving it to someone else.

Then I look at all the things that have happened in the last five years that six years ago I would have said would never happen, but they did.

I look at Cypress and at Germany wanting to hurry up the process of getting regulations in place for bank bail-ins as suggested by the IMF (??, I think the IMF but memory falters) on a three year time span. Germany says that is too slow...................... Hmmmmmmmm.  Does not instill confidence in the system.

I look at the number of people who have actually saved for retirement compared to the number who have not and government employees depending on the government for their retirement.................. and realize there are a lot more of them than "us" savers.

I hope it does not come to raiding retirement plans for funds, but I would not want to place any sizable bet against it. "Can't happen" seems to happen all to often these days.

John