The
Bankster mentality
“Greed
is good,” proclaimed Gordon Gekko, lead character in a 1987 film lampooning the
low ethics of the high finance barons of Wall Street.
You
might think that, surely, this Hollywood portrayal is a gross exaggeration. But
check out an egregious example of Gekko-level greed being pushed by today’s
Wall Street sharks.
Big
shot financiers have been going all out to kill a sensible Labor Department
rule meant to protect people’s retirement accounts from the self-serving guile
of financial manipulators. The rule simply requires firms that manage these
accounts to put our money in investments expected to produce the best returns
for us, rather than in investments that pay the highest interest fees to them.
It’s
hardly harsh to require them to treat us common customers with basic honesty,
applying what amounts to a Golden Rule for bankers. But — oh, howls of outrage
exploded from the Wall Street baronies!
Lobbyists swarmed into Washington, and scores of lawyers rushed into courts. To defend their right to be dishonest, the greed-fueled bankers resorted to more dishonesty, claiming that the fiduciary rule would hurt “smaller investors.”
Huh?
Well, they prevaricated, only by misdirecting small retirement savers into
high-fee investments can we make enough profit to give “affordable financial
advice” to workaday folks.
Again,
huh? These banks are wallowing in unconscionable levels of profits, but the
only “affordable” advice they want to offer to us is bad advice, funneling our
retirement stash into deals that benefit them at our expense.
Bankers
claiming that they have a legal right to profit by cheating their own customers
is a level of gluttony so gross that it would even gag Gordon Gekko. For more
information, connect with Consumer Federation of America: www.ConsumerFed.org.
OtherWords
columnist Jim Hightower is a radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and
editor of the populist newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown. Distributed by
OtherWords.org.
