You are hooked on their crack.
The old form of retirement, pensions, were deemed legal for thievery by our "justice" system. Large swaths of our population had a lifetime of work indirectly stolen.
Buy a company, strip it of assets, put it in steep debt, declare it bankrupt, and the final step, shed the liability of honoring the retirement plans of the employees. They go after the pension plans in the guise of company insolvency.
So now you believe you can trust your IRA's to these folks? Now you think the government will protect you from those retirement thieves?
Ponder this....... 401K and IRA's are so relatively new, there is not enough data to suggest they are viable as retirement plans to begin with.
They have not survived the test of multiple generations. They have not even survived the test of a single generation when the full lifespan of current recipients are taken in to account.
Yet, you are committed. You have no way out. You suffer from a new disease known as "interest alignment". You are forgiving of Exxon drilling in arctic wilderness if your retirement is invested in Exxon. You are forgiving of sweatshops in Bangladesh if your retirement is invested in WalMart. You are forgiving of pumping organic chemicals into our aqua firs. You are forgiving of companies reducing "operational costs" by moving their operations abroad. You are forgiving of the ill conceived plans laid out by our money brokers.
They have happily passed you the crack pipe. Now they are dreaming up a scheme to take your 401k. Believe me. It is coming. Just like Pensions. Just like Social Security. They want it all.
Myself? I invest in three month Treasury Bills. If my federal government goes belly up, there isn't much of a retirement to look forward to anyway. Further, I can now fully support taxing the Holy Shit out of those criminals on Wall Street. I'm not invested in them.