September 25, 2012
Branding anyone with a million dollars (including retirement assets) as an accredited investor is a farce. A union teacher pension rollover to an IRA could easily qualify, and unionized teachers have no knowledge of economics or investing by definition. Once you get this little gold star by your name, it is open season for hedge funds.
The accredited investor badge amounts to a Hedge Fund game of The Running Man, a hunting license where retirees are the prey. The elderly and retirement accounts in general will wear a government issued beacon to draw predators.
Twenty years from now we will have yet another government created crisis in elderly poverty, which will trigger another massive regulatory effort. By then the current generation of retirees will be bankrupted, the hedge fund operators will be orders of magnitude richer, and DC will have taken over and wrecked another slice of the economy. Business as usual.