> Many of these companies make up substantial portions of people's returement savings

If those people did the prudent thing, and invested into an index fund, as opposed to picking stocks of companies that are being ran irresponsibly, their retirement savings would, on aggregate, be fine.

I'd rather not have everyone else's retirement-savings-to-be bail out those bad investments.

>If those people did the prudent thing, and invested into an index fund, as opposed to picking stocks of companies that are being ran irresponsibly, their retirement savings would, on aggregate, be fine.

Index funds go down with the market... but perhaps more importantly, there _has_ been a massive shift to index/ETF trading. You know what that did? Pumped up the market as a whole. Now individual business assessment is less valuable because businesses with crap fundamentals go up and up and up due to index buying. Just another bubble.

but moral hazard makes the management of these companies worse and worse everytime one gets bailed out

Not for the banks after 2008. I think far more people should have been arrested, but the reason our banks have enough liquidity to ride this out is due to regulations out in place after the last bailout.

Sure, but you're talking about regulation of the companies, not the management within the companies themselves. I think the parent comment's point stands.

Wasn't really needed with QE and being the first to profit of this free lunch.