8 II. The State of Our Pension Funds “The people who did the collateralized mortgage obligations, sold them to pension funds, then sold them short, then bought credit default swap insurance on them, are just amazing. They are a law unto themselves.”– BEN STEIN “Imagine if the pension funds and endowments that own much of the equity in our fi- nancial services companies demanded that those companies revisit the way mortgages were marketed to those without adequate skills to understand the products they were being sold. Management would have to change the way things were done.” – ELIOT SPITZER “Social Security got passed because John D. Rockefeller was sick of having to take money out of his profits to pay for his workers’ pension funds. Why do that, when you can just let the government take money from the workers?” – AARON SWARTZ