Wall Street is crying and stamping their feet over new rules championed by Elizabeth Warren and implemented by Barack Obama. The rules apply to financial advisors and basically says that they have to put their clients interest ahead of their own. It is being vociferously opposed, as you can imagine.
Every few years, the Missus used to invite a financial advisor over to sit at our table and explain the multitudinous benefits of working with his company. I'd sit through those meetings patiently, but they were basically the same as those guys who want to sell you new windows: long on charm, short on sound financial footing.
It's not that the advisors didn't have correct things to say, it's that they don't work for you and never have. They work for themselves and their companies. They push people into stocks that benefit them and their companies. When they push their clients into Acme Manufacturing, that may help your bottom line, but you can be damned sure that it helps theirs.
While these reforms will no doubt ignite the caterwauling from wealthy lobbyists that we saw with Dodd-Frank, we can also be sure that - like with Dodd-Frank - this will result not in the collapse of capitalism, but in a ever so slightly more even playing field between Wall Street and the rest of us.
Politically, this is precisely the sort of thing for Democrats to win with. By all means, let Republicans defend the idea that financial advisors can sit around your kitchen table and lie to you about investments. Let's see them try.
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