Juggling Dynamite

The fact that the financial sales/advice business has successfully skirted the duty to put the client’s best interests ahead of their own profits is an outrage in a world dependent on fiduciary professionals for advice in many critical areas every day.

This discussion with Elliot Weissbluth, Founder and CEO of HighTower Advisors, on the rollback of DOL’s Obama-era fiduciary rule, and what it means for financial advisors and investors is on point.  Here is a direct audio link.

However even pro-fiduciary discussions fall short in scope when they focus just on the selection of picking one lower fee product over another.

Well before one gets to product selection, there are many individual details that a fiduciary must ask and consider if they are to render truly client-focused advice.  First and foremost is to ask about a client’s personal financial means including their income, DEBTS, dependents, assets and liquid savings.

Generally, it is in the individual’s best interests to review their budget/spending, pay off their personal debts (mortgages too!) and build up cash savings, before they get to making non-registered investments (outside of tax-sheltered accounts).

If someone has non-registered savings accounts and personal debts, usually the best advice is to use the non-registered savings to pay off their debts, even though this means they would have less capital to give to a financial advisor or portfolio manager.

If a financial advisor is not reviewing this issue and making this recommendation at the expense of capital that they might otherwise have brought under management, they are not putting the client’s best interests first.

And if a advisor/manager works in a place where they are paid a higher fee on client assets that are allocated to equity securities (higher risk) over fixed income (lower risk), this is also a conflict of interest that threatens their fiduciary responsibility.

The UK’s first vegan döner kebab restaurant has just opened in London. What The Pitta! opened on the 9th March and serves a fully vegan menu. Their döner kebabs are available with bread, cous cous, or chips. The bread is made fresh to order and they even have their own vegan tzatziki. Here is a direct video link.

Steve Keen is a ‘renegade economist’ who has been debunking classical economic theory for decades. Steve argues that ever-rising levels of private debt are unsustainable in the face of rising interest rates, but that the US Federal Reserve will continue to raise them anyway until the credit cycle implodes – at which point the Fed will turn about and inevitably return to stimulative policies. The economist maintains that until the level of private debt is addressed, the Fed will remain intellectually locked in a neverending cycle of massive asset bubbles and extraordinary busts. Here is a direct video link.

Here he explains why piling on of debt in Canada, Australia, China and South Korea after the 2008 crisis have made these countries likely epicenters of coming financial crisis.

Here is a direct video link.