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The
Cato
Conclusion®
An Insurance Pro Shop
Exclusive
©
Copyrighted
2009, All Rights Reserved
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.”
Your comments on this article, or your views
on this topic, are
welcomed. Please send your thoughts to
InsurnaceProShop.com
________________________________
Forrest
Wallace Cato,
RFMA, RFC,
creates, establishes, and maintains, desired images as market
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Cato says: You Can Cut A Greater Figure!
770-516-9395 (phone),
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