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Comment by wmf | Hacker News Reader

More like "What if people told me to put my 401k in index funds then half the companies on the index get wiped out due to a sudden policy 180?" At this point the bailouts have already been priced in for a decade and it isn't even politically possible to say "this will be the last bailout but next time there will be bankruptcy".

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>"What if people told me to put my 401k in index funds then half the companies on the index get wiped out due to a sudden policy 180?"

Maybe it is time people paying into pensions and 401k's begin to understand they are scams enshrined in law to prop up the financial industry.

Maybe if mainstreet stopped giving their money to wallstreet to mismanage in the first place there would be no need for future bailouts to begin with as wallstreet runs a muck with pension and 401k funds. These are the very same bankers who continued to buy toxic mortgages in 2008 with Client funds as the banks were selling off any positions they had in the very same assets.

I think it would be interesting to see a tabulation of all the implied government guaranties compared to the practical limits of the government to generate money by "printing" dollars. The first category is practically unbounded and dynamic, I think. I wonder under what circumstances it could swamp the second category.

Then you'd take a deep breath, pull up a chart from any other recession in history, and see that you and the market index will be back to where you were in 2-5 years. This would be a good time to buy, and average down your positions.

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