401(k) fees and disclosure, fiduciary rules, mutual funds, Social Security, retirement planning.
171 articles · page 5 of 9
Democratic presidential candidate made an historic pledge today by promising to breakup the same global U.S. banks that caused the 2007 recession, wiped out trillions in wealth for all Americans, and have been abusing their privileged status for generations. In his speech today, Sanders said: “If a bank is too big to fail, it is…
An old tale tells the story about a scorpion who wanted to cross a river. Unable to swim, the scorpion asks a frog, who was sitting on a nearby rock, if he could ferry him across the river on his back. “I would do that for you, but how do I know you will not…
The near decade-long battle against adopting the fiduciary standard has been politicized from the start, butyesterday’s passage of the Senate’s Omnibus 2015 $1.1 trillion spending bill delivered a huge package of tax breaks, as well as a provision that barred the SEC from forcing financial companies from disclosing their political contributions to trade associations. This…
2016 looks like it will be a rocky years for investors. U.S. economic growth in 2016 was cut to 2.4%, a decrease from a previous estimate of 2.8%, according to a report by Goldman Sachs in September 2015. On a global level, GDP growth was cut from 4.3 % to 3.7% primarily due to a slowdown in China…
The leading trade association of the $16 trillion in assets (as of year-end 2014) mutual fund industry has again shown its distain for individual mutual fund shareholders. In a recent letter to Congressional committee, the president of the Investment Company Institute (ICI), the mutual fund industry’s leading lobbying group, went on record last week as…
Coca-Cola, Big Tobacco, Oil and the Need for a Fiduciary Standard. What do all of these things have in common? At first glance, it would seem nothing, but there is a common thread: It’s about levels of deception. In some cases, these are deceptions that have lasted for generations and some that have caused millions…
The more it changes, the more it is the same, is a paraphrase of a French proverb, but in this interesting exchange between Senators and Wall Street executives in 2010, in this case Goldman Sachs, the issues of ethics, fiduciary responsibility, and conflicts of interest were aired for one of the first times in a public forum.
Principal Life, a subsidiary of Principal Financial, one of the nation’s largest companies in the 401(k) industry, likes to portray itself as the folksy neighbor interested in your financial well-being. But as a recent settlement shows, Principal Life has no qualms about pushing its own, more expensive proprietary funds to unsuspecting employees…
The age of consumerism has passed over the financial services industry. This means average investors who buy mutual funds, insurance policies, annuities and other types of investments work under the assumption that their financial representative is working in their best interests. This is a false assumption. As numerous lawsuits and ongoing battles over the role…
Fool’s mate happens in chess when a player, often a novice, is boxed into a position where any action leads to defeat. That’s the case for individual investors today as evidenced by the record 1,089 point drop in the Dow-Jones Industrial Index in first few minutes of trading on August 24, 2015. After about one…
In the never-ending debate about the retirement advisor industry’s adoption of the fiduciary standard–aka, giving a customer an even break–a Department of Labor (DOL) official has cut to the chase and said the fiduciary rule would effectively change the advisory business culture. And that’s exactly why the industry hates the fiduciary standard and financial regulation.
Maybe it was just bad timing, bad politics, bad people or a bad system, but for anyone concerned about law enforcement and the delivery of justice to the afflicted, the administration of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder from 2009 to 2015 was a mockery of the law and a great victory for white collar criminals.
The unprecedented decline in housing prices suffered as a result of the 2008 recession is still significantly affecting retirement wealth, but it also has great far-reaching implications for the future of retirement planning. The reason: home ownership is the main engine for generating retirement wealth for most Americans. Housing wealth exceeds money held in retirement accounts,…
Financial advisors today find themselves in a major ethical dilemma: Should they represent their own monetary interests before those of less-sophisticated clients? Or, should they mention, as history has repeatedly shown, that the larger financial system contains more built-in major risks that cannot be hedged and can destroy years of accumulated wealth in a single major…
Most businesses value their customers, but inherent conflicts-of-interest in the financial services industry unfortunately prove this is too often not true. Here’s why: The daily business in financial services is selling financial products, often without regard to fees and overall costs of the investment. Too often, this means more expensive or inappropriate products are sold…
Being an individual investor today is tough. Not only do you have to suffer through increased market volatility, a low-return environment, worrying about job security and whether you will get a raise, but now there is another new source of concern: your financial services industry trade association. While the vast majority of investors do not…
Financial fraud is a large, profitable business, but you would never know that reading the financial press. That’s because banks and investment firms perpetuating these frauds, aka “perps” on “Law and Order,” are so ingrained into the nation’s financial services fabric that criticizing them is verboten in the mainstream financial press, such as the Wall…
Fool’s mate happens in chess when a player, often a novice, is boxed into a position where any action leads to defeat. That’s the case for individual investors today as evidenced by news stories involving two of the nation’s largest financial institutions. Taken together, these events involving JP Morgan, with $1.7 trillion in assets under…
Yesterday’s announcement that comedian Jon Stewart, 52, is leaving the Daily Show after 17 years as host and writer, marks a major turning point in comedy, but also in how news is presented. TV critics have rightfully pointed out that the show’s irreverent style, humor and tweaking the face of established political forces…
