By: Jack WaymirecloseAuthor: Jack Waymire Name: Jack Waymire
Email: jack@paladinregistry.com
Site: http://paladinregistry.com
About: Jack writes for the InvestorWatchdog website and Worth magazine. He worked in the financial services industry from 1976 to 2004. For twenty of those years he was the president of a Registered Investment Advisory firm and a Broker/Dealer. Jack is the author of Who's Watching Your Money? The 17 Paladin Principles for Selecting a Financial Advisor and is a co-founder of PaladinRegistry.com.See Authors Posts (87) | January 22, 2010 | The Politicians, Wall Street Ethics

You need investment advice to help you achieve your financial goals. Your need creates a sales opportunity for licensed sales reps, advisors, planners, brokers, and agents. It also opens the door to unlicensed reps selling scams.

Wall Street companies know how to take advantage of your need. For example, its companies produce “feel good” advertising messages that are designed to create the perception of exceptional competence and integrity. After all, that’s what you want to hear when you select a financial services firm and advisor.

Then there is the “other” Wall Street that has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbyists who route money to the politicians who control financial industry regulations. Wall Street doesn’t like uncertainty. It spends a lot of money to make sure regulations favor companies and not investors. Based on trillions of dollars of recent Wall Street engineered losses, the politicians are supposed to be enacting new regulations to prevent similar meltdowns in the future. Don’t hold your breadth. Wall Street is sending additional millions to politicians on committees to defeat those regulations or water them down so they have no significant impact on companies’ ability to make money from your assets.

Which Wall Street do you believe? The Wall Street in the advertising messages or the Wall Street that sponsors anti-investor lobbyist activities? Both can’t be true. This is a core Wall Street conflict of interest - whose interests come first, investors or companies. There is a lot of evidence that it is company interests and that creates additional risk for Wall Street clients.