Like Conspiracy Theories?

Here's one that's about as plausible as any.

Just imagine that the current financial crisis was carefully planned and executed by the government, with willing accomplices among a few key CEO's from Wall Street.

Paulson, Bernanke, Cox, Reid, Pelosi, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Franklin Raines, and several others conspired to create a financial crisis by strong-arming major banking and investment firms into making a high number of bad loans. Included in their arm-twisting was an implied promise that when all came tumbling down, the powerful government leaders would see to it the executives involved would escape with very sweet parachutes.

Why was this crisis engineered?

Here's where the conspiracy theories really come into play.

The obvious motive: Destroying the public's confidence in capitalism to usher in a statist/socialist government controlled by the same people named above.

But how about this one: Decimating American's 401K's and Pensions to head off a Social Security crisis just when the peak of the Baby Boom generation are reaching retirement age. Millions of people who were planning to retire in the next 5-10 years have lost an average of 40% of their retirement assets, and the volatile stock market may move even lower.

So all these baby boomers are rethinking their retirement plans because they no longer have the money they counted on to see them through a comfortable retirement. Millions will have to postpone retirement, thus delaying their applications for Social Security Retirement Benefits.

There's a story running around that the new President Obama may introduce a plan that would offer Americans a sort of guaranteed defined benefit retirement pension in return for what's left of their 401K or IRA accounts, representing a massive government confiscation of the personal savings of the American population. I'm not yet sure whether it's true.

Sound plausible? I think it's frighteningly plausible.