My 401k is being controlled by monkeys

I was reading today that the recent economic downturn has resulted in 401k plans around the country losing in the neighborhood of 2 Trillion dollars this week alone. What this means obviously is that some folks will have to work a couple more years in order to make up for the losses. My 401k is down 38% as of today, and I have a feeling our economy is not going to make any significant return to the positive until at least 3rd Quarter 2009. All of this got me thinking that a lot of people are confused about why they are losing so much money. It must be because we are investing in monkeys as the following story suggests.

Once upon a time, in a village, a man appeared and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10 each.The villagers seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest, and started catching them. The man bought thousands at $10 and as supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their effort.He further announced that he would now buy at $20. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again.Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms. The offer increased to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so little that it was an effort to even see a monkey, let alone catch it!The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at $50! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on behalf of him. In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers. "Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has collected. I will sell them to you at $35 and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each." The villagers collected all of their life savings and bought all the monkeys from the assistant. Then the assistant left town and the villagers never saw him or the man ever again.