Hardest workers are taking biggest hit

It must be great to be a Wall Street executive. You are paid millions of dollars for risking billions of dollars that do not belong to you and when you lose on the bets you made you can turn to the feds to bail you out. Not only do you get the bailout, you get to walk away from the job with millions more in your pocket, adding insult to injury. So with millions of everyday Americans taking hit after hit in the 401Ks my question to the feds is: Where is our bailout?

We have been told by the feds that we need to save for our own retirement because Social Security alone will not be enough to cover our costs of living in the 10, 20 or more years of retirement many of us should look forward to. We are told we have to work longer before we get the Social Security we have paid into our entire working life. Yet when corporate greed and malfeasance occur, whether in private investment firms or companies, the mortgage industry or the automotive or other private sector, the government sees fit to step in and offer billions of taxpayers dollars as a reward for bad business decisions and investments, but the average stockholder in a mutual fund or 401K plan is left high and dry.

Where is our BAILOUT? Why should we continue to finance the greed of corporate America and the financial sector and the millionaires who got filthy rich making loans to people who had no business getting loans as they couldn't prove they had the income to cover such debt, and leave us with protections to our retirement accounts? Why not send billions to the big mutual fund accounts and 401K plans to shore up their balance sheets and protect the assets of the people who have worked hard all their lives and should have this cushion to cover their retirements? Are we any less deserving of recouping our losses than the giants of Wall Street?

Cindy Bandur

Island Lake