Whether the fund in question is a mutual fund for retail investors, a retirement fund for employees of a particular company or government department, a film fund looking to finance a slate of motion pictures, or a real estate fund planning to buy apartment buildings for university students, the same basic commercial logic applies.

FORBES: Looking Inside Private Equity and Hedge Funds

The stockmarket soared earlier this month, thanks to the government bail-out and to new tax breaks for mutual-fund investors.

ECONOMIST: Indian stockmarket

Even more perniciously, they could encourage the disturbingly popular notion that somebody, somewhere bankers, fund managers, companies or even the government should now pay for the losses that gullible and greedy investors ran up after the bursting of the stockmarket bubble.

ECONOMIST: Why investors should always be suspicious of advisers