![\"Wall](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Trump-gambles-with-retirement.jpg\")
\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Anyone who wants a secure retirement should recall what Las Vegas tourists inevitably learn: The house always wins. In this photo, President Donald Trump stands at a craps table at the Circa Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Jan. 25, 2025. | Mark Schiefelbein \/ AP<\/p>\n
Your retirement savings are supposed to be the safest money you\u2019ll ever have\u2014not a roll of the dice. The whole point of a 401(k) and other retirement plans is to let you gradually build wealth that brings economic security in your golden years.<\/p>\n
But private equity firms are itching to lure retirement savers into Wall Street\u2019s casino. Anyone who wants a secure retirement should recall what Las Vegas tourists inevitably learn: The house always wins.<\/p>\n
Private equity is a business model built on raising money from big, sophisticated institutional investors like pension funds, endowments, and insurance companies\u2014then buying companies to flip them for profit.<\/p>\n
It works out well for Wall Street executives who pocket enormous fees, but it often leaves companies and workers in ruins.<\/p>\n
Toys \u201cR\u201d Us<\/a>\u00a0was driven into bankruptcy after being loaded with debt by its private equity owners. So were hospital chains\u00a0Steward Healthcare<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Prospect Medical Holdings<\/a>, craft powerhouse\u00a0Joann Fabrics<\/a>, the\u00a0TGI Fridays restaurant chain<\/a>,\u00a0Payless ShoeSource<\/a>, and\u00a0Sears<\/a>. These companies were all gutted by private equity deals that prioritized quick payouts over long-term stability.<\/p>\n But now, the big investors these Wall Street firms once relied on\u2014like Yale University, which oversees a staggering $41.4\u202fbillion endowment\u2014are\u00a0walking away<\/a>\u00a0after years of high fees, murky accounting, and disappointing results.<\/p>\n If the pros are stepping away, who\u2019s left? Ordinary savers who hold\u00a0$12.4 trillion<\/a>\u00a0in retirement accounts. Private equity firms want to bring the workers holding this cash to the table, where the game is stacked against them.<\/p>\n And\u00a0the Trump administration is helping them<\/a>, pressuring the Department of Labor and the Securities and Exchange Commission, the very agencies meant to safeguard retirement savers, to open the door for private equity firms to enter 401(k) plans.<\/p>\n Private equity firms see you as easy prey. Your retirement account is a steady pot of money, and they\u2019d love to siphon off fat fees while locking you into risky, opaque investments you can\u2019t escape. They get rich whether you win or lose\u2014and you get stuck with the bill.<\/p>\n While a standard index fund charges less than half a percent in annual fees, private equity takes\u00a02% off the top every year, plus\u00a020% of whatever gains the investments make<\/a>. There are \u201ctransaction fees,\u201d \u201cmonitoring fees,\u201d and other made-up charges that guarantee the casino wins\u2014and your golden years pay for someone else\u2019s yacht.<\/p>\n If you invest your money in the stock market, you can see what\u2019s going on: Up or down, it\u2019s very transparent. Private equity funds set their own valuations, meaning your account balance could look fine on paper even as long-term losses pile up. Plus, your money could be tied up for five or ten years. Need cash for an emergency? Too bad.<\/p>\n No one saving for retirement ever asked, \u201cCan you make my 401(k) riskier, less transparent, and more expensive?\u201d Instead, this push is coming straight from Wall Street, which has spent years buying political influence in Washington.<\/p>\n The Trump administration\u00a0welcomed private equity executives<\/a>\u00a0into its ranks and has been eager to deliver on their agenda, weakening the rules that kept retirement funds safe for decades and clearing the way for Wall Street to raid ordinary people\u2019s savings.<\/p>\n Retirement savings should be boring. Boring means low fees, broad diversification, steady growth, and money that will be there when you need it. But in the private equity casino, Wall Street never risks its own chips. They rake in the pot while you\u2019re left holding the losses.<\/p>\n The lure of gambling is insidious. Wall Street will play on that as it pushes the Trump administration for finance-friendly changes. If private equity is allowed into 401(k)s, the only ones guaranteed to come out ahead are the billionaires.<\/p>\n And your golden years? You\u2019ll be cleaned out.<\/p>\n Institute for Policy Studies \/ OtherWords<\/p>\n We hope you appreciated this article. At\u00a0People\u2019s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading\u00a0People\u2019s World\u00a0and the stories we bring you, please\u00a0support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today<\/a>. Thank you!<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCONTRIBUTOR<\/p>\n
![\"Chloe](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/ChloeRogers-200x200.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anyone who wants a secure retirement should recall what Las Vegas tourists inevitably learn: The house always wins.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167641,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[28,110,1929,147,530,644,2830],"class_list":["post-167640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-economics","tag-labor","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance","tag-trump-administration","tag-u-s"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167640\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}