They’re coming for your 401(k).

As I’m sure you’re aware, President Trump is always searching for ways to make our lives better and our bank accounts fatter.

His latest plan is Executive Order 14330, titled “Democratizing Access to Alternative Assets for 401(k) Investors.”

Or, in plain English:

the private equity boys, public-spirited guys like Apollo, Black Rock, and Goldman Sachs, are in desperate need of a new source of capital, and the $12.2 trillion in 401(k) savings (some say as high as $27 trillion) is their big, fat target.

❓❓Do you think private equity belongs in Americans’ 401(k)s? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments. ❓❓

Private equity runs “2 and 20.”

Retail PE funds marketed for 401(k)s charge expense ratios of roughly 3-5% — some tack on sales charges up to 5% more.

Compare that to a Vanguard S&P 500 ETF at 0.03%.

That’s over 100x the cost.

PE firms set their own valuations with no public market to check them — what one FT writer memorably called “mark-to-make-believe.”

No market-tested prices, no forced transparency.

Money locked up for years — a dangerous mismatch for workers who need loans, rollovers, or hardship withdrawals (which have already doubled to nearly 6% of participants over five years).

The largest retail-focused PE funds returned about 12% in 2025 — less than the S&P 500’s 17%.

Over three years, they’ve returned less than half the index’s pace.

Zoom out further: a 2026 study of 58,000 retirement plans over 16 years found plans with essentially zero alternative-asset exposure returned 9.13%/year, beating pension plans loaded with PE and hedge funds, which returned 7.79%/year.

The proposed DOL “safe harbor” makes it harder to sue fiduciaries over excessive fees or bad picks — a plan could load up on high-fee PE and still be shielded.

• Private equity & private credit firms (BlackRock, Apollo, Goldman Sachs) — already rolling out 401(k)-targeted products, positioned to collect billions in new fee revenue with reduced legal exposure.

• Crypto firms — a pathway onto 401(k) menus just as regulators loosen up.

• Fiduciary-liability insurers — Rep. Maxine Waters flagged that the DOL official leading the rulemaking previously founded a firm that insures fiduciaries against exactly the lawsuits this rule would curb.

• The Trump administration delivers on a deregulatory agenda dressed up as “access.”

Washington Post personal-finance columnist Michelle Singletary called the plan a Wall Street “greed grab,” noting that in years of talking to people about retirement, nobody has ever told her they wished their 401(k) had more illiquid, high-fee alternative assets in it.

Jim Baker, executive director of the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, on the proposed legal safe harbor:

“Private equity firms should not get a free pass to loot workers’ 401K retirement savings.”

Benjamin Schiffrin, director of securities policy at Better Markets, didn’t hedge:

He predicted “a massive train wreck where many people are seriously hurt” and that retirement accounts will be “annihilated.”

Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College — one of the most respected pension researchers in the country — questions the entire premise, noting that the only real constituency pushing for private equity in 401(k)s is the private equity industry itself, and that her own research on public pension funds found adding PE didn’t improve returns or reduce volatility.

And here is the Instagram video companion to this article in case you missed it