Comment Re:Legitimate question (Score 1) 310
As for #2, it doesn't really work that way. The govt didn't bail out ANY retirement funds (at least not private sector ones, nor any mutual funds and similar, money markets, etc). There were some people made whole for certain things out of FDIC or other insurance, but presumably they were paying for that via the premiums coming out of their returns, so its not QUITE a bailout, though perhaps the premiums are subsidized. So in the final analysis the problem isn't that the investors are too big to fail, its the firms themselves that get the bailouts.
Of course the retirement funds weren't bailed out. They didn't have to be, because the companies they invested in were bailed out instead. If the various investment banks were allowed to fail then they'd probably all crash and so would everything all those retirement funds were invested in. THAT is why those companies were too big to fail in the first place.
If investments were just a toy for the wealthy then we could let them play their games and take their haircuts. The problem is that the investment sector affects everybody, so we have no choice but to intervene when things go wrong. That gives us the right to prevent things from going wrong in the first place, even if it means the rich can't play their games any longer...