It is time to take our retirement accounts out of Wall Street. 

Pension law has re-allocated investment capital from our local communities and funded the crooks on Wall Street. We are required to give our retirement funds to this system prone to corruption,  high fees and poor returns.  It is time to realize the securitization of America is a failed experiment and we must restructure the capital of America.  We have seen capital move from  the local bank, to money market funds, to high frequency day trading in equities, to the most irresponsible leveraged hedge funds gambling our future, and we are all poorer for it.

Public Pension funds used to make investments in their communities, earning a return for the participants and building their local economy.  I know in Alaska,  very little of the $17 billion PERS/TERS, $10 billion plus CBR or the big Kahuna $35 billion Alaska Permanent Fund is invested in the local economy.  As the Trustees chase returns in hottest markets overseas or the newest, never fail formula from Wall Street, local communities starve for investment capital.  Only those who can attract the attention of Wall Street have access to capital, "to small to start". 

I wonder just how many IRA's or 401ks are invested in local businesses or real estate? 

We must remove the legal impediments to investing our retirement savings in our local economy by expanding local investment alternatives for individual retirement accounts, 401K's and the like.  Why should the retirement investor be denied the opportunity to invest in the local community on a tax advantaged basis?  We need to encourage the large public funds to start investing in our communities and local businesses in order to create a stronger local economy.

We must stop the forced export of local retirement funds out of our communities to Wall Street.  Wall Street has not treated our investment capital well - charging excessive fees, making poor investments, exacerbating volatility for their own profit and paying themselves absurd salaries and bonuses.