Editorials & Other Articles

and that's ultimately what the Wall Street/Corporate hacks want; access to a huge pot of $ without allowing the owners any say in how corporations are run.

Folks who put their retirement $ into 401ks almost always invest them in mutual funds who in turn invest them into individual stocks. What you lose in doing this as opposed to directly buying stocks is your proxy vote. If everyone actually owned the stocks directly instead of handing the money over to mutual funds, then we'd all get a say in how companies are run. For example, maybe corporate executive packages wouldn't be so generous if all of us exercised our proxy vote and said "no". As far as I can tell most mutual funds are pretty passive on stock oversight, letting the board do as they want unless something goes haywire.

Now I do know there as some socially responsible mutual funds and some state pension systems are more active in corporate governance. But I've always wondered how things would go if regular folks with 401ks actually had a say in the companies they own shares in (through mutual funds).