401K,403B,a trip into the absurd.

While banks are getting rewarded for their mismanagement with massive injections of bailouts -taxpayer money would be more appropriate a name - , leaving the Jo the plumbers, the Betty the teachers, and the Bob the retirees deal with debts, foreclosures, job losses, and a vertiginous drop of their retirement funds, I recently had the opportunity to dip into the reality of the latter.
As I was trying to figure out a way to finance the purchase of a new used car that I need to go to work, and willing to avoid more credit, I called my retirement fund offices to enquire about the conditions to withdraw some money out of my retirement account, as I had read on their website that you could make a withdrawal under a "hardship" clause without penalty. Yeah, too good to be true.
A very patient lady drove my ignorant Frenchness into the meanders - or should I say the swamp - of my retirement plan.
So my first disappointment was that guess what, that clause didn't apply to my contract. DANG.
But wait, she says, I should call my employer's benefits office, and there I may get a loan against my 401K. Here you go: Reality goes beyond fiction, you'd invent a story like that no one would believe it. What? I was to ask for a loan against some money that I HAVE? Then why couldn't they just give me my freaking money instead?
Kafka himself wouldn't have imagined something like this.
Out of the blue, I asked to check my balance (last time I checked a month ago my savings were intact) . Well I had lost almost 10% of my savings. And, she says bluntly, it's going to go down more!
"What?! It's gonna go down more and you're telling me I can't withdraw my money, and all I can do is watch my savings shrink?!"
But wait, the best is yet to come. So I call my employer's benefits office, and they tell me I had been misinformed, my plan is not a 401K, but a 403B, and therefore there are no loans, and I cannot, EVER, touch any of it unless I retire or terminate employment.
I could have sworn I heard a concrete block fall. My head was spinning. It took me immense efforts to remain civil on the phone - good self control and anger management exercise-
So here we are, guess who's playing with my savings, as we speak, and shrinking them while I am denied access to them?
AAAAaaaaaaaaaargh! My savings are in Wall Street!!!!!!!!!
- Thieves street, they should rename it -