May 16, 2011
I'm writing because my family and I were affected by the economic collapses of 2000 and 2008, and we don't want it to happen again.
After turning my grandfather's pension into a 401(k), his company invested it in a mutual fund with tech stocks and derivatives. After the crash of 2000, my whole family lost everything. Part of it was my college fund. He died old, broken and alone. I haven't gotten the chance to go to a college long enough to get a degree. This happened to my father's savings account as well, destroying all he had managed to build up for himself after returning home from Vietnam. He turned to cocaine to ease his depression and left my family. These people have destroyed my family and any future my family could've provided me.
One way to change the incentives so Wall Street doesn't collapse our economy again would be for regulators to set up a way for shareholders to grab back ill-gotten gains.
If it turns out that the profits in a given year were built on shoddy practices that become clear in the out-years, those bonus payments should be forfeited.
Thank you for considering my comment,
Jonathan Netherton