401k investors have lost a bundle lately. But is it a problem with the 401k plans themselves? Jane Bryant Quinn of NewsWeek thinks so. “We need to be protected from our own mistakes”, she cries. How noble of her.
A 401k plan is an investment, in other words, a gamble. The problem with these investor’s returns is not with the 401k plans; rather, it is with the nature of a fickle economy, the frauds perpetrated by Enron, WorldCom’s management, among others, and participant’s own lack of understanding of investing. Let’s not fix something that is not broken.