In just three and a half years in the U.S. Senate, Elizabeth Warren has become one of the most polarizing figures in Congress and among the legislators most hated by members of the financial services industry.The financial services industry is designed to reward deception and self dealing.
An early proponent of creating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — even before she was elected to the Senate — the 67-year-old former Harvard professor also has emerged as one of the most ardent champions of the Department of Labor's fiduciary rule for retirement accounts. She has been a pit bull at congressional hearings, taking on Wall Street interests at every turn, and has had public run-ins with former Finra chief Richard Ketchum and SEC Chairwoman Mary Jo White.
“It is perfectly legal for some brokers and financial advisers to take kickbacks, prizes or even vacations for selling lousy products to unsuspecting customers,” Ms. Warren said at a congressional forum in March 2015, shortly before the DOL proposed rule was released.
That's the kind of rhetoric Robert Braglia, president of American Financial & Tax Strategies Inc., a registered investment adviser, rejects.
“She's more anti-business than she is pro-consumer,” he said. “She's coming from a place that all “fill-in-the-blank” are bad. Every industry she goes after, she paints with the same broad brush, which is unfair.”
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“I live here [in Boston] and can't name a single human being in my immediate or extended social circles that likes her, has or would vote for her, or who can even say that they don't loathe her,” Jeremy Cohen, a broker with the Independent Financial Group, wrote in the comments section of an InvestmentNews story the day Ms.Warren took on Mr. Ketchum in a congressional hearing.
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“She's the bane of most brokers,” said Paul Auslander, director of financial planning at ProVise Management Group. “Most RIAs I talk to … have disdain for Elizabeth Warren, but they find it hard to argue with the fact that she's been a champion of this [fiduciary-duty] effort.”
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“If you only see the bad, you're going to think that all [advisers] are bad,” said Eric Bishoff, chief executive of Bishoff Financial Group. “To the people in the industry, that's insulting.”
Its denizens see themselves as Galtian ubermenschen who defend capitalism against moochers.
They are the moochers, and they need to get over themselves.
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