If you have a 401k then you should watch this PBS video by all means and see how Hedge Funds skim off and play with the money.
See the fees that are in there and how Wall Street operates basically with little or no regulation, scary. As the video says first it was our houses and not it's the retirement money and even the PBS journalist who did the story is looking at his 401k. A did a quick summary below but their video and another one who works with the Occupy Financial move is on my blog and watch it too, she's on the money literally.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/...
The 401k Plan, is one of the products that consumers buy that Americans don’t know the price and they don’t know the quality. Once again we return to the world of complexities and so how did it get that way? Models and software that execute algorithms and formulas that manage the accounts. Consumers are attending educational meetings and walking out confused. Also, due this fact consumers don’t know the “danger”…we are back to those algos as mutual funds through regulation has been able to protect themselves, no transparency.
When 401ks began, they all looked good and were performing well in the late 90s and people were impressed as investments were growing. In 2000 the market collapsed and all the earnings were gone. 401k money was going into company stock. Savings were lost and so were jobs. Stock algorithms moved the money based on markets. Later when the real estate crashed, jolt number two with after having lost 401k money, now the house was not worth much.
Consumers are now borrowing against their 401k accounts while Wall Street still gave out huge bonuses.
People who own the models are the corporations…”hedge funds are set up to hose pension funds”…one sentence says Cathy O’Neill and I recommend watching her presentation filmed at Columbia, as she has coined some of her presentations “methods of math destruction”. She used to work as a Quant aka Mathematician at a Hedge Fund a few years ago and gives you some inside information relative to their culture and how they think. Her job was in futures predictions with risks and they had her there doing a job and somewhat ignored her work? Manipulating models to lie can make money and it has been done for quite a while and this keeps inequality growing.