Article: The Guilty Small Fries Had Their Part In The Meltdown Too

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Just like many others with retirement accounts yours truly has lost a lot of money. Unlike many, though, I'm not ready to accept it as part of the risks one takes in life. Let me explain.

About a year ago I had a conversation with my financial consultant about protecting my assets because it seemed like bad times were coming. He merely repeated the mantra about not believing in timing the market and riding it out and by the time I'm ready to retire the account will be way up. Silly me listened to him and now I'm out $8,000. Thanks for nothing buddy.

This guy didn't even have the courtesy to call me about the situation. When I called him recently he acts like he's so happy to hear from me. Then the stuff got deep. No apology, he just starts talking trash about how there was no way he could have known the market would go so far down and if he could foresee such things he'd be rich, ad nauseum. Never mind that I called and asked him about that a year ago.

Later, I spoke to another financial consultant who wanted me to invest with him. He said my portfolio was too aggressive--that's why I lost so much. His people only lost about 25% during this down turn, he said. He actually thought this was selling point!

Here's my point, if I could see it coming why couldn't these financial wizards? Isn't their job to see that their clients make money? True, they don't guarantee results and even issue a warning about the account possibly losing value. Fair enough, but that is only so one can't sue them. It doesn't excuse them from having a job to do, which is looking out for their clients' money.

So why do these two guys still have jobs? Their bosses should have fired them for such incompetence. This should be happening industrywide. That it isn't, is troubling. What's obvious is that none of them care about the little guy. Their only concern is the commissions they can make off of us and no more. The system functions as a giant vacuum cleaner to bring in people's money. If it works out great, if not then too bad.

Now that I've vented, the point about the guilty small fries part in the present meltdown is that had they acted to take people's money out of stocks and into safer investments we'd all be in a much better situation. If the trillions of dollars that have been lost had instead been saved the economy would be much better off. It is true that these financial consultants didn't cause the problem, the government did, but they sure helped make it worse.