By Forrest Wallace Cato
Financial Planners Emerging As America's New Heroes
According to recent issues of The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and The New York Times (among others): "The over-all national image of financial planners continues to improve despite major frauds being perpetrated by scoundrels like Bernard Medoff and others in the financial world. Their frauds are being exposed as stocks and real estate values tumble." America's planners and our military personnel have long been my heroes. There are a few bad apples in America's military but they are a very small minority. All-in-all we can be extremely proud of America's financial planners and service men and women.
Lew Nason, founder of the famous Insurance Pro Shop, explains, "Reliably measured trends now indicate that more-and-more insurance agents eventually become financial planners. Most planners today come from the insurance industry. This trend helps improve the ranks of planners. The average planner sells more insurance than does the average agent! The old self-promoting financial planner clown is becoming a relic of the past. This positive trend is being lead by Registered Financial Consultants, many of whom are considered industry role models. Of course these professionals are members of the emerging International Association of Registered Financial Consultants (IARFC)."
Here is a fact that more people should know…
…Financial Planners take an oath to act in the best interest of their clients. Independent professional "ethics studies" about the financial industry, show that planners do not routinely take advantage of people and exploit them as do many other financial professionals. In many-many cases, financial planners help more people than do any other financial professionals, including attorneys, accountants, bankers, and people in the brokerage business. Why do accountants enjoy such a good image when they charge the hell out of people? And lawyers never do for their clients in one visit what they can do for them in three visits, while some brokers needlessly buy-and-sell (churn) stocks in the client's portfolio. It seems that these professionals charging fees and commissions go on-and-on.
Marvin Schur Froze To Death
Ninety-three year old Marvin Schur of Bay City, Michigan, froze to death in his home a few weeks ago. He owed the local municipal electric utility a thousand dollars in past-due bills. The greedy utility turned off his electricity during freezing weather. The thousands of dollars that Marvin Schur paid the utility over many years counted for nothing during the recent blizzard. Living in a town of 35,000, about 80-miles from Detroit, in the USA today, he was forced to gradually freeze to death because of money he owed.
What a miserable way his life was ended just because he could not pay his most recent electric bills on time. Will you eventually expire like he did? Will some of your loved ones go to their death like this? No less than eight financial planners e-mailed me, or phoned me, to talk about this tragedy. Their responses did not surprise me. They were upset because they cared about this 93-year old citizen, though they did not know him.
The first financial planner to mention this incident to me was T. Jerry Royer, RFC, of Group 10 Financial in Haines City, Florida. T. Jerry Royer is considered by many in the financial planning industry to be a consummate role model. Jerry Royer's compassion, concern, and caring for his clients and fellow man, is outstanding amongst financial advisors and consumer activist groups.
Like the post office, the cable company, the phone company, and many other USA monopolistic "service" corporations, the only apparent major concern of that money-grabbing utility was to periodically raise prices and forever get still more bucks out of the elderly Mister Schur.
My first three immediate thoughts, after learning of this tragedy, were:
(1) This is another horror caused by "free enterprise" run amuck. Please read this complete article before you quickly disagree.
(2) What a perfect retirement cottage Mr. Schur lived in. His house was small, neat, clean, and well-kept, in a middle class neighborhood. From the appearance of his modest home I assumed that he had been very responsible during his life and had planned well.
(3) Fat politically-connected old white men are usually in charge of any utility. And old people tend to be rigid and set in their ways.
Oddly enough I also quickly even visualized the appearance of those typical, fat, politically-connected white men who are the top executives of most any American utility. Every top executive at any utility that I have ever seen was always a soft and bloated, politically-connected, self-important, old white man who was over-paid. The greedy people in leadership positions on Wall Street, banking, mortgage companies, auto companies, and other corporations, that I have met, or seen, mostly appear (to me) to be fat, politically-connected, and self-important, old white men -- a trend I predict will soon change to include plump and complacent old rigid and pompous people of other races. These dull old farts are so inflexible and uncreative. You're right, I'm not a fan.
Myths About Who Really, Helps America's People!
There are many rapidly fading American myths about who actually helps the people in our country. These myths have grown over the past hundred years having been promoted by people the myths benefit. Finally our citizens are wising-up:
Wall Street doesn't help people. People at most every level along Wall Street help themselves. Wall Street pays-off greedy politicians in Washington so they will pass laws and regulations that enable Wall Street to exploit people and grab more-and-more of the investor's money. Financial planners help people.
Banks do not help people. Banks help themselves. The banking industry pays-off crooked politicians so they can get laws passed that enable banks to legally take more-and-more money from the people. The banking industry has gotten every law passed, that they wanted passed, for the last 85-years. All of these laws and regulations make it possible for banks to further exploit the people. Financial planners help people.
Mortgage Companies do not help people. Over half of the mortgage companies actually cheat people while claiming to be "making the American dream possible!" How wonderful mortgages are. You can easily buy a hundred and fifty thousand dollar house and eventually pay half a million dollars (or even more) for it. But the repossession rate keeps rising and rising, so don't count on ever getting your house paid-off. Not one person in a hundred actually understands the mortgage he or she has. This is no accident. Mortgage companies pay-off worthless Washington politicians so mortgage companies can get laws and regulations passed that enable mortgage companies to steal and exploit people. Mortgage companies establish resolution departments to guarantee that they win every dispute. It has long been well-known that over 50% of all mortgages in effect today are excessively exploiting the customers yet the disgusting politicians do nothing about this! Mortgage companies over-pay their top executives. You could often get a better deal from organized crime. In fact, why are so many criminals in the mortgage business? Financial planners help people.
American Auto Corporations do not help people. Car companies take advantage of people. American auto companies pay-off stinking politicians in Washington to pass laws and regulations enabling the car industry to make mostly inappropriate and over-priced junk products. Car companies highly exploit their customer base. They over-pay their top executives. Financial planners help people.
Corporations do not help people. Corporations exploit people. Corporations pay-off the lying politicians in Washington so corporations can get laws and regulations passed that enable corporations to squeeze every dollar they can out of their customers. Many corporations obscenely over-pay their top executives. If a hamburger can be worth three hundred dollars then a top corporate executive can be worth over five million dollars. The greedy corporate executives – who are the shame of America -- grab this excessive amount of money and perks because they can. Financial planners help people.
The Drug industry does not really help people. Drug companies exploit people to the max! They have corrupted medicine and meaningful regulation by paying-off the rotten people in Washington. The paid-for politicians pass any and all laws the drug industry desires. And they desire laws that enable them to over-charge and exploit consumers. Financial planners help people.
Lawyers do not really help people. Lawyers exploit you if you have a legal problem or need. They stand ready at this moment to take advantage of you. They created the legal mess and got the laws and regulations passed (by paying off your "so-called" representatives in Washington) and guess what – these laws require you to need and use their services and to pay for them at their rates and on their terms. All this even though mere lawyers can not stand-up to the massive unlimited powers of the feds. Financial planners help people.
Oil and gas industry leaders, executives and managements do not help people. This giant industry helps itself. The oil industry pays-off dishonest Washington politicians so they can get laws and regulations passed that make it legal for the oil and gas industry to charge massive prices and gouge, and gouge, and gouge, and gouge. Financial planners help people.
Congress does not help people. Elected representatives help the special interest that pays them money! Politicians mostly tell you untruths and pretend they are honest and worthy. They pass laws and regulations that make it legal for you to be robbed, exploited, cheated, used, abused, etc. Financial planners help people.
The Georgia Governor Asked Me To Help
The Governor of Georgia appointed me to serve on the Consumer Utility Counsel. Our job was to find help for people who could not pay their gas, water, or electric bills. Our objective was to assist troubled folks in resolving their financial problems with utilities. Over the years, America's utilities paid-off state and federal politicians, this enabled them to get many laws and regulations passed allowing them to exploit their customers. I'm not a trained social worker. But like a good financial planner, I know what is acceptable and decent, though I am not a financial planner.
You don't allow people to freeze, or starve, or to be cheated, simply because corporate entities are greedy, politically connected, and can routinely pay-off despicable politicians to pass laws so that utilities can mistreat the people. But that is what has been taking place in America more and more, year-after-year, as "free enterprise" is abused due to a lack of enforced meaningful regulation, plus a lack of honest government. Our present dreadful economic conditions did not happen overnight.
We – the members of the Georgia Consumer Utility Council, based in Atlanta, -- gave-up our salaries, so that even that money could go to help those in need.
Once again, the profession that called me the most – when they learned of someone needing assistance – was financial planners. Dentists, doctors, lawyers, ministers, and Congressional members never called. The planners called because they cared. Over-and-over I reacted by calling on different financial planners to help people in need who were not their clients.
Perhaps that was because financial planners were the professionals I know best.
And many planners responded and helped because they were good and decent men and women. They managed to find time in their busy schedules to help rescue desperate people, who the greedy elements of our society do not care about. Actually these overly-greedy elements of our society do not care about you, they only care about the money they can get from you. I knew the moral fiber of financial planners. I thought they would help. I was not disappointed. They did help.
During my lifetime I have only been cheated by one New York financial planner. One, -- out of the many hundreds of planners I have known, -- is not bad odds.
Most financial planners I know are honest, smart, concerned, disciplined and intelligent people who want to help others. But we need careful and enforced financial regulation because a few "who call themselves" financial planners are only hustlers out to grab some more dollars -- even if this means saying anything, promising anything, concealing anything, or selling an inappropriate annuity to an easily confused senior citizen. These clowns are becoming a "dying breed" because consumers are finally wising-up. They are a very-very small minority. And they are detested by real planners.
Loren Dunton, the founder of financial planning, once told me, "My greatest regret is the clowns who call themselves financial planners and have plagued our industry since inception." The clowns contribute nothing to the industry associations, except possibly complaints. Clowns do not support anything, they don't pay their membership dues, attend their own conventions, purchase books with state-of-the-art information about their supposed specialty, research and write articles, support projects that encourage college students in the study of financial planning, or do anything for the profession they claim to be a part of. Loren Dunton was most proud of the financial planners who helped protect and defend the people. This concept of "doing the right thing, by acting in the best interest of the client," played a large part in what Loren Dunton envisioned as the role for this new profession.
Only one professional group persistently phones me with complaints about excessive Wall Street greed. These immoral Wall Street hustlers and banker thieves actually feel entitled to take this money in the form of obscene bonuses! They have been actually stealing taxpayer bailout money. The one group that calls most often with complaints about the present obvious excessive corporate over-payment, bonuses, and other money misuse is – you guessed it – financial planners!
"Financial planners are important. Planners control a multi-trillion dollar industry.
More than any other profession, planners help people the most with their money goals." Lew Nason, LUTC, FMM, RFC
It bothers financial planners to see money stolen from the people and then hear Americans told that this is acceptable. These callers are not people who misuse the title of financial planner to help them hustle more people. These are real financial planners who are responsible financial professionals that care. They have studied and have become qualified with appropriate knowledge to properly practice their craft. They are not mere product pushers.
Do You Agree With Carl Marx?
Guess who once said, "Capitalism enables greed and exploitation to run amuck." The person credited with making that statement was Karl Marx (1818-1883, the founder of communism). So not to sound like a Communist, I used the words "free enterprise" instead of Capitalism. I never thought I would ever agree with Karl Marx about anything. But obviously what we have today in the USA is an abuse of the Capitalistic system through greed and exploitation with a lack of adequate regulations being enforced. We have basically evolved into a system of unaccountability.
Why does corruption flourishes in our system?
What produced our recessive economy was, is, and remains, greed and exploitation running unchecked at all levels, in ways small and large. What Wall Street, and the mortgage industry, and banking, are all most reflective of today, is greed, corruption, and exploitation operating without meaningful controls. They are not willing to accept both transparency and accountability. One of the leading causes of the lack of enforcement is the so called "revolving door policy," that allows the special interest groups to flourish by going unchecked from the private to the public sector and visa-versa. Our government – let's call it the federal government because it is not really ours any longer – is what happens when greed and exploitation are out-of-control, causing regulation to be circumvented and thus suppressed, enabling special interest to purchase the passage of any laws they desire.
Citizens are badly exploited and harmed when capitalism is abused by greedy special interest that purchases the prevailing laws and regulations. Ask the person on the street if he or she is happy with what is going on. Financial planners are also not happy about this because they serve the people's best interest. Planners are the good guys here.
James D. "Beau" Henderson, RFC, of Fiduciary Capital in Gainesville, GA, is a financial planner who is active in civic, social, fraternal, religious, and educational works, all of which are involved in one-time-only efforts or ongoing projects that benefit people of all ages in his market area. "Beau" Henderson often speaks to groups warning them about the many ways in which they are now exploited.
Here is an example of what James D. "Beau" Henderson says: "When money crosses hands the politicians quickly forget the perils of unfettered capitalism. They sell out and forget you. Today we see the results of deregulation. The results are obvious. Government is the problem and not the solution. This is the era when contaminated (salmonella) peanut butter is officially discovered; people are warned about it -- but it is sold anyway. Virtually everyone knows that you cannot serve two masters at once. A federal agency like the Food and Drug Administration, having been infiltrated through the revolving door policy, (like most government agencies) is destined to become incompetent, uncaring, and not held accountable."
Beau Henderson continues, "Can anyone in government be accountable to both the private and the public sector at once? It currently appears as if no one in government is accountable for anything. They can even refuse to accept federal subpoenas. You can not do that, but they can and do. Don't hold your breath until someone in a federal agency gives up their big salary to help. Don't expect a first time event like government employees working late at the office some night."
"Doublespeak," first mentioned in George Orwell's 1984, is alive and well here and now. Wall Street paid ratings agencies to declare that questionable financial offerings were sound. They took the money and did so. Again-and-again planners, -- financial professionals truly in the trenches with the people, -- sounded the alarm to deaf ears in governments at all levels. For years planners told me, "This is insane! The housing bubble will pop! Our economy will be a disaster."
At first I wondered why most everyone I knew lived in a mansion?
As I said before, it is estimated that more than half the mortgages now in effect cheat and exploit the people paying for them. Planners have railed about this. Yet nothing was done. America's financial planners decry this prevailing practice standard even now, still nothing is done. What happened to federal protection or state scrutiny? Why do states approve bad products to be sold in their states? Is this the result of "money getting results" again? What happened to our system of checks and balances and other built in "safety nets"?
Other than financial planners, who is concerned about the people? Is anyone else, anywhere, concerned about anything except endlessly taking money from the people? The financial planners I know and respect are very concerned about the many present massive abuses of capitalism that make excessive greed fulfillment possible.
Bailout tax money goes to the special interests that control the federal government. Thus, even the obscenely greedy can further enrich themselves. Plus, the special interest can better serve their greedy purposes. There was little in the stimulus program to help the consumer, private citizen, individual, poor, or middle-class. Apparently, the tax paying citizen is not even a real concern of Washington. Money is taken (in taxes) then given to special interests so that the special interests can continue to shaft the consumers who pay the taxes.
Do you really want another over-priced, gas-guzzling, American made car that you know is lacking in quality? An over-priced car actually made to exploit you! Arrogantly the easily deluded Americans laughed at Toyota, Kia, and Hyundai when they began competing here. Now these are the three top sellers. Do you really think there is any point in going to an American bank for anything? Are most places in America going to help you or harm you? If you think they are not going to exploit you to the max then let me tell you about a big bridge I have for sale in Brooklyn. America's financial planners are not happy about what is going on because they care about their clients and fellow man.
Allowing capitalism, as it currently exists, to police itself, can only result in more harm, ciaos, and corruption. What could we expect if the inmates in a mental institution for the criminally insane were to exchange places with the staff and then asked to regulate and police their institution? As long as we allow special interests groups to flourish through a revolving door policy the institutions will not work the way they were intended.
These special interests groups are winning at the people's expense. Each corporation will forever squeeze every possible dollar out of you and your elderly parents and your children. When you have no more money left you can simply freeze to death. Our present system has become brutal to our people. Past money they took means nothing to the takers. It is future money they demand, and now. To hell with you if you can not pay! To hell with your children! To hell with your grandchildren! If they can not pay more and more then let them freeze!
Greater oversight of commerce and industry is highly needed but will be fought with money from commerce and industry. And money, -- just like the banking or credit card industry, -- always wins in Washington. Fifty thousand citizen voters do not have the influence of one lobbyist with cash. American is like a candy bar. This country keeps getting smaller with more phony ingredients. The United States Postal Service, which seems to raise its prices every six months, now wants to discontinue delivering mail on Saturday.
The many abuses of capitalism mean that little-by-little, America is going out-of-business, unless this trend can be stopped or reversed. These abuses of capitalism even mean that the existing form of government is no longer working as originally intended. Capitalism -- the greatest system of all -- is now even becoming dysfunctional due to the money pay-offs to politicians that end-up causing capitalism to allow greed and exploitation to run wild.
Cato's Conclusion: Financial planners and many other responsible Americans are alarmed. Historically, the financial planning industry has seen the "handwriting on the wall" while others in the financial industry become part of the problem. Many planners have been outspoken critics of this system gone awry. Many financial planners, at great peril to themselves and their families, speak truth and reality to the lies of the controlling powers that enable endless predatory practices. Realities that became obvious during this decade of greed and corruption are causing Americans to realize that capitalism, as we now know it, is allowing people to be harmed because of the many abuses by special interest, and most financial planners are among the very few who are actually on the people's side. CNN reported, on January 31, 2009, "One profession that is certain to be in great demand in the USA during the next ten years is financial planning. Financial planning is certain to grow and even flourish during the difficult days ahead."
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