Comment by samwilliams

I think the reference to retirement funds is in relation to the fact many of them are under collateralized. They need to take new investor's money to pay out old investors.

Some more background here:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/an-ohi...

The situation is pretty extreme. To be honest, these really _do_ look like Ponzi schemes.