  In hot gauge theories a breakdown of the hard thermal loop expansion occurs
for light-like external momenta or in the infrared region. In QED where a
resummation of ladder diagrams is usually advocated, it is shown that long
range magnetic interations involve a broader set of graphs. The consequence is
a generalized compensation of the hard modes damping terms at leading order in
the infrared limit and near the light-cone. The relevance of the so-called
improved hard thermal loop resummation scheme is discussed.
