“You would think the total lack of a moral compass — standing alone — would cause you to flee from their offices…”

Is your financial adviser exercising independent judgment and providing you the information and fortitude to fight the herd mentality? Read on and find out…

The Intelligent Investor: Why Your Adviser Is Scared to Set You Straighthttp://online.wsj.comNew data suggest that financial advisers may be unbalancing instead of rebalancing their clients’ accounts.

Be careful if someone approaches you touting their financial expertise based on some fancy initials after their name. Regulators report an uptick in financial advisers using dubious designations to court older, wealthier clients in an effort to sell high-fee investments that aren’t appropriate.

 

Is Your Adviser Pumping Up His Credentials?http://online.wsj.comIncreasingly, say regulators, financial advisers are using these dubious designations as marketing tools to win the trust of older, wealthier clients, in hopes of selling high-fee investments that aren’t appropriate for them.

“Today giant banks not only create and sell investment products, but also bet on those products, and sometimes against them putting bank’s interests at odds with those of their customers.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/18/business/18advantage.html

Now this is disappointing news. The do-gooder from CHiPs is taken down by a FBI+SEC sting. At least take a moment to click on the link and relive better times from the good old days.

“It’s not easy to get rich at Las Vegas or Church Hill Downs or at the local Merrill Lynch office.”
— Dr. Paul Samuelson (the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Economics)

The Great Recession is official in the record books. The 18-month recession began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009. This was the longest slump since the Great Depression according to National Bureau of Economic Research’s Business Cycle Dating Committee, a group of academic economists that determines these benchmarks.