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This is by DESIGN. The endless promotion of 'market based' retirement savings works very well to tie large chunks of the population to the performance of stock indices, and must contribute to more players seeming 'too big/important to fail'. After all, it is not just the money of the rich and fabulous in the market. It is also mom and pop, and their meagre 401Ks. Which could lead to convenient 'solidarity' for bailouts. Let's not forget how eager the market enthusiasts were to attempt to move even national retirement schemes (social security in the US) to market based rather than defined benefit plans. Fortunately they were not as successful as they might have been.
by someone (s0me1smail(a)gmail(d)com) on Tue Sep 23rd, 2008 at 04:16:05 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Indeed. And I remember hearing people in the 90s saying that stocks would never fall again because the constant influx of retirement money would keep prices rising indefinitely.

The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman
by dvx (dvx.clt ät gmail dotcom) on Tue Sep 23rd, 2008 at 04:27:22 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Hah! Surely the "demographic crisis" and the "baby boomer bulge" always implied the opposite?

That's what I feared anyway.

by Metatone (metatone [a|t] gmail (dot) com) on Tue Sep 23rd, 2008 at 04:54:35 AM EST
[ Parent ]
What a very odd remark.

Even if there hadn't been a baby boomer bulge, this is saying:
-that prices would keep rising even though stocks would become obviously overvalued. So retirement money would end up going into the fund of lowest return.
-the inflow would always greatly exceed the outflow.

You are what you choose to believe...

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Gandhi

by Cyrille (cyrillev domain yahoo.fr) on Tue Sep 23rd, 2008 at 05:44:45 AM EST
[ Parent ]
It is odd, what can I say?

Except that a lot of people drank that kool-aid.

The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman

by dvx (dvx.clt ät gmail dotcom) on Tue Sep 23rd, 2008 at 06:48:54 AM EST
[ Parent ]

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