Smaller hedge funds, unable to spread the costs as widely, will fail, and their clients will turn either to larger competitors or to more traditional financial institutions.
"We were sitting there, not really knowing what was going on, not talking to other pension funds, unable to respond in any way except to sit there" while decisions were being made by others that would greatly impact the funds' investments," said the 62-year-old Unruh.
If supply is known to be limited (and say because of funding, unable to respond to demand), many in need will simply not seek services, and/or very restrictive eligibility criteria will be imposed.
Some strategies require investors to go short (bet on falling prices) or use borrowed money: pension funds and mutual funds are unable to do so.
But what if one contributor to a multiemployer fund is unable to pay its bills currently?
However, the assets in the fund are unable to meet its long-term commitment to pay pensions.
And yet even with this lower bar, it found that the average retail fund was unable to clear it.
When the market unravelled, hedge funds were unable to retrieve collateral that their brokers had "rehypothecated", or used to fund transactions of their own; billions of such unsegregated money is still trapped in Lehman's estate, reducing dozens of its former clients to the status of unsecured general creditors.
Currently, Icelandic pension funds are unable to invest abroad and access to foreign currency for holidays is tightly controlled.
Migrant survivors assessed as having "no recourse to public funds" are unable to claim housing benefit, and are therefore barred from most refuges and supported housing services.
