If your mother is a teacher or otherwise has a pension, her benefit is guaranteed whatever happens to the fund. That assumes her employer doesn't go bankrupt or otherwise dump its obligations on the PGC.

If you invested your 401K or mutual fund in hedge funds or CDOs or toxic waste tranches, you can reap the worldwind. You pay your money, you take your chances.

Pension funds and the entire financial industry are already regulated out the ying-yang. Which doesn't prevent Enron from ripping you off. Or hedge funds from charging outrageous fees that some people willingly pay.

What sort of regulation do you propose? Making bad investments illegal? If you wish to make fraud illegal, that has already been done.

We need several amendments. I'm not a finance guy, I'm a contract specialist in the oil and gas industry, this isn't my area of expertise, but here goes:

1. I'd like to see the weird accounting go away that allows a company to book profits before the money is received. The counting your chickens before the egg is even laid-What's it called, Mark to Market?

2. Pensions and other funds where the money is managed by a fiduciary should have to disclose fully to the regulators and the beneficiaries

a. The name of any hedge funds and their country of registration. In other words, if they are operating under Panamanian registration to dodge taxes, or Bahamian so they can have bank secrecy, I want to know it

b.The principles in any hedge fund and their compensation from the fiduciary's funds.

c. their general type of business-oil and gas comodity speculation, investments in loan tranches, investments in any illiquid investment like working interests in oil and gas wells exploration funds, or loan products that are new and have never sold in a market

d. any commissions paid to the trustees, including things like golf vacations in Scotland or investment conferences at somebody's Alaskan hunting lodge

e. other involvements of the trustees with any of the principles of the fund-were they given a personal opportunity to get in on somebody's commercial real estate deal with 100% financing in exchange for using the trust fund's money in another commercial real estate deal with a big back in after payout?

3.participants in a company operated 401K, or a union pension fund should be offered easily transferred at no cost options like a mutual fund or inflation indexed treasury bond fund

4.. Boards of Directors or Fiduciaries should be liable for their mistakes, including liability that uses the assets things like their inhertited Testamentary Trusts to repay victims of malfeasance

5. a death penalty for corporations and people's careers. If a person uses a corporation to defraud others, the person should never be allowed to work in any financial capacity again. For example, any director of a company like Enron or Reliant or Duke should be prohibited from being an officer or director of any corporation. When a company like Reliant is found guilty of fraud like the California natural gas manipulation, all the officer's should be prohibited from being the officer or director of any other company, and the company sold to an honest company in the field, or the assets broken up and distributed to the victims, the creditors and the stock and bond holders, in that order.

That ought to be a pretty good start. The general principle is that the deals should be transparent, and Trustees and Boards shouldn't be allowed to shelter any assets from repaying injured parties. Let's allow people to know what their fiduciaries are really up to, and give them a no cost way of opting out.There's a lot of difference between a Bond fund in Treasury Inflation Indexed Securities, and a Bond fund in outlandish products that nobody can understand and are illiquid, like all the Tranches in the subprime loans. And last but not least by any means, why are corporations allowed to continue after they have engaged in criminal fraud? Why are multimillionaires on a board allowed to shelter any of their assets from the victims of fraud or gross stupidity? Why are corporate bondholders and lenders given preference in bankruptcys over victims of fraud?

1. Mark to market is something else. A lot of these toxic waste tranches don't have no markets to mark too. Ok, let's take a real world example. I go to the McStore and buy some McCrap on my credit card. A week later the McBank credits the McStore's bank account with actual money. A month later the McBank discovers the credit card number was stolen off the web. So they yank their money out of the account. When can McStore Inc. book the sale as profits?

2. Pension funds are regulated out the ying-yang. Not my area of expertise. They already file thousand page documents you can leaf through.

4. Board of Directors can already be sued for their mistakes. That's why your pension funds buys D&O insurance with your money. Don't you love when security lawyers vow to bankrupt a malfeasing company on behalf of the stockholders they allegedly represent.

5. The SEC already bars people from working in securities again. That's why the crooks have to keep finding new ways to scam people.

Oilmanbob,

We lost the right to a corporate death penalty in 1886 when …
“…[A] two-sentence assertion by a single judge elevated corporations to the status of persons under the law, prepared the way for the rise of global corporate rule, and thereby changed the course of history.
http://www.ratical.org/corporations/SCvSPR1886.html

“The only explanation provided was the court recorder’s reference to something he says Waite said, which essentially says, “that’s just our opinion” without providing legal argument.” http://www.thomhartmann.com/theft.shtml

One further antiquated idea for this credit crisis thread….
U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 10, Clause 1:
No state shall… make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debt. http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#A1Sec10