Courtesy of Pam Martens.
President Obama Signs the Presidential Memorandum Creating the MyRA at U.S. Steel in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania on January 29, 2014
Yesterday, the White House transported a little cherry table with the Presidential seal for a signing event in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania. President Obama was visiting workers at a U.S. Steel Corporation manufacturing plant there and used the occasion to officially sign the order creating the new MyRA, a retirement account with low dollar minimums for participation.
The Presidential Memorandum, surprisingly, was devoid of any salient details of how the MyRA would work and effectively gave the U.S. Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew, carte blanche to tailor the account as long as it complied with the following: “By December 31, 2014, you shall finalize the development of a new retirement savings security that can be made available through employers to their employees. This security shall be focused on reaching new and small-dollar savers and shall have low barriers to entry, including a low minimum opening amount.”
The President’s memorandum adds further that “within 90 days of the date of this memorandum, you shall begin work with employers, stakeholders, and, as appropriate, other Federal agencies to develop a pilot project to make the security developed pursuant to subsection (a) of this section available through payroll deduction to facilitate easy and automatic contributions.”
This is the first we’ve heard to date that the MyRA is just a pilot project and not going to be a full scale rollout. After speaking with the U.S. Treasury, and scouring fact sheets provided by the White House, this is the detailed outline of how the MyRA is currently envisioned.
Firstly, this is not a new retirement account. The President has no authority outside of Congress to start creating retirement accounts for the country. This is the existing Roth IRA account that is being offered a new investment product from the U.S. Treasury which has low dollar minimums in order to reach less affluent workers.
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