892 articles · page 33 of 45
As an earlier article on this web site said, there were no chairs thrown at the Bernie Sander Democratic convention in Nevada. The media did a poor job of verifying an allegation by a second-hand blogger that chairs were thrown, but the political media never did their basic job of due diligence. The event…
Being a political outsider has captured the attention of the American electorate in the last decade or so and is now been credited with generating a fundamental re-assessment of the national political establishment. Now, it’s time for outsiders to emerge in the financial services industry. Why? Simply because the “financial services industry,” a term I have used thousands…
The best way for the average American to build wealth is through home ownership, which creates home equity accompanied by appreciation, which is difficult to achieve in the stock market. That’s why any weakening of the long-touted dream of people owning their own homes is critical to the long-term abilities of working people to become…
It is easier to steal a canoe than a pack of gum and so it was in Nevada this week when the Nevada Democratic Party railroaded the Bernie Sander’s campaign by ignoring a floor debate and unilaterally declaring a vote and more delegates to Hillary Clinton. The disputed result produced a vocal display on the convention floor,…
Today’s decision by the US Department of Labor to authorize overtime payments for certain workers to boost their net take home pay is good news for financial planners. Under the new rules, almost all workers earning salaries beneath the “overtime salary threshold” of $23,660 are entitled to time-and-a-half pay whenever they work more than 40…
Changes in technology, politics and regulations are converging to bring new changes to the financial industry. And in a rare move, all of these present new benefits to average investors. What makes these changes noteworthy are that they are forcing the very conservative, often anti-investor financial services industry, to essentially give investors more control over their investments…
With the Department of Labor (DOLs) long-delayed, new fiduciary standard is now becoming more accepted, the financial services industry still has not confronted its biggest conflict-of-interest: using client’s money to fund lobbying campaigns designed to victimize their own customers. Like animals that eat their young, the financial services industry lobbying machine takes unsuspecting client’s money,…
When science is used for political purposes it results in some very distorted and dangerous results that serve a specific point of view at the expense of the rigorous standards mandated by the scientific method. History has numerous examples of scientists who have twisted, concealed or fabricated scientific studies to promote an industry or political…
Like the citizens of Garrison Keillor’s mythical city in Minnesota, Lake Wobegone, where 90% of the residents are in the top half of the class, 90% of today’s wealth managers continue their quest to find the top 10% of the wealthiest Americans. It’s a tough search, and by all accounts, it looks like it will…
Every financial advisor dreams of a future when their expanding practice includes a large number of wealthy, retiring clients having portfolios north of $500,000. But it’s time for a reality check. That is not going to happen because more new jobs don’t pay much, and worse, even people with 401(k)s are highly skewed in their…
The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has done a yeoman’s job of tentatively passing new a new set of regulations that will benefit individual investors from the conflicts-of-interest that are too common in the financial advisor business. But in order to get the revolutionary new regulations passed, the DOL had to make concessions to the…
The Trump Administration has announced that it will seek to reverse the U.S. Department of Labor’s historic announcement that millions of investors will finally be able to receive objective, unbiased information about their investment choices. This attack on the fiduciary standard also is being abetted by the most powerful, reactionary lobbying forces in…
Social responsibility has been a buzzword in corporate America for decades, but nowhere has it been more conspicuously vacant than in the recent stories about the pending retirement crisis that is currently facing millions of Americans. At issue is whether the retirement industry, comprised of investment, mutual fund and insurance companies, 401(k) plan administrators and…
In this election season, it’s pretty clear that the quality of political reporting has been called into question by both the electorate and even the president of the United States. Yet since economics, especially income disparities between classes and lack of wage growth and retirement security have also become central issues among Democrats, it is…
Fund expenses are the only thing an investor can control. They cannot control market volatility, political disputes, oil production, Fed interest rate policy or the decisions made by public companies. But they have total control over their fund expenses and these represent money that goes directly to any investor’s bottom line. As noted in the…
As a career politician, Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan knows the value of money, both now and in the future. Now, he has secured both by vowing to oppose the DOL’s pending fiduciary standard rule. And in the process, he will be paid lots of money. How much money are we talking about?
At long last, the General Accounting Office (GAO) has been asked to investigate the revolving door personnel changes that occur under every administration between top-level people working on Wall Street who enter the very federal agencies that provide oversight for their former firms. This revolving-door scenario is common at all the major federal agencies that…
Self-regulation is the Republican mantra today, but it has a long history of failure, especially in the financial services industry. As events have shown, price manipulations and outright fraud have been part of the daily business practices at some of the world’s largest banks and investment firms. This helps explain why six U.S. banks agreed…
For better or worse, political talk radio and TV are how most Americans are getting their news about the 2016 presidential candidates and the state of the nation. Most people who know the difference between professional journalism, or even appreciate traditional journalism, lament the rise of political commentators who push an agenda in search of…
Financial journalism used to be a straightforward presentation of market, company and economic facts, but almost imperceptibly over the past decade or so, financial journalism, especially on cable, has become blatantly pro-corporate in its daily news presentations and ever-present commentaries and editorials. This new distorted version of financial journalism has paralleled the deification of laissez…
