Wall Street could seize your retirement savings in the next financial crash — and it's perfectly legal

Fox News ^ | 2/15/26 | Justin Haskins

[Libloather]

Recessions and stock market crashes are inevitable in a market-based economy, but few Americans realize that their investments face risks far greater than falling stock prices.

Because of largely unknown legal changes, millions of Americans could temporarily or even permanently lose their retirement and other investment savings in the next major financial crash, all while too-big-to-fail Wall Street firms and banks are protected.

That might sound like a wild conspiracy theory, but the danger is real and well documented.

How Wall Street centralized ownership of your investments

Beginning in the 1970s, at the request of powerful Wall Street and banking institutions, state lawmakers quietly adopted a series of changes to the Uniform Commercial Code, a body of law enacted in all 50 states. These changes effectively allowed financial institutions to reassign direct ownership of most securities away from individual investors, including those holding retirement accounts and traditional brokerage accounts.

Under the revised legal framework, direct ownership of securities such as stocks and bonds was centralized within a single financial institution controlled by Wall Street’s largest firms and banks: the Depository Trust Company, or DTC.

Today, DTC "provides custody and asset servicing for 1.44 million security issues from more than 170 countries and territories valued at more than US $100 trillion as of 2025." To put that figure in perspective, the entire federal budget is roughly $7 trillion.

[TexasGator]

“and couldn’t handle just one large brokerage firm’s liabilities,”

SIPC does not cover the firm’s liabilities. It insures accounts.