A recent Supreme Court ruling in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission granted corporate executives more leeway to use company monies to fund political ads, and it largely presumes that officials will be kept accountable to investors such as mutual funds and pension funds through spending disclosures and corporate democracy. However, this is considered unlikely by some observers, as even major institutional shareholders have little influence in corporations' political spending. In the Supreme Court ruling, Justice Antonin Scalia contended that freedom of speech includes "freedom to speak in association with other individuals, including in the corporate form. While such an argument may be appropriate for bodies with a clear political agenda, it is seen by some as more farfetched to assume that investors who buy stocks are endorsing the notion of executives speaking on their behalf on political issues.

The Employee Benefit Research Institute reports that 29 percent of retirees have nothing saved for themselves, suggesting that workers need to start thinking more carefully about how they will plan for retirement. The most practical step is to save money by spending less and remembering that it is never too late to save and received compound interest, especially because the government provides "catch up" allowances for people over 50 for 401(k)s and IRAs.

"You're young. You have a little extra cash this year, and you want to open a Roth retirement account. Go ahead, invest in a really risky mutual fund, your friends say," writes John Waggoner of USA Today. "Don't listen to them. You should invest like an old fogey when you're young. And if you do, you'll probably have more money when you retire than those other whippersnappers." Waggoner says that a Roth IRA is a great investment at any age, adding that there's no reason to take undue risk. "Planners usually tell you to take your biggest risks when you're young," says Waggoner. "But there are several holes in that line of reasoning. First, risky investments don't become less risky with age. The longer you hold a risky fund, the more likely you are to have a catastrophic loss. And in the long run, the big gains may not compensate for the huge losses."

Discussing the outlook for recovery and stocks, with David Goldman, First Things First Magazine and Peter Navarro, University of California-Irvine professor.