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The Death of Trust

January 9, 2009 on 12:54 pm | In Baby Boomers, Warren Buffett, economic meltdown |

Like you, I’ve been watching (and heavily reading) all the news of the U.S. economic meltdown during the last few weeks, almost breathlessly, the different stories and different fragments of the economy swirling around me like parts of homes in a tornado. As you may remember I predicted all of this more than 18 months ago and published it in the beginning of 2008 in my Special Report, The Baby Boomers Hidden Secret Formula Exposed. So I’ve been waiting for something new to say here at the beginning of 2009, something to tell you beside the obvious.

I finally found my inspiration in a column by Laura Rowley, a financial writer with unique insight whose work I really like. She is talking about “The Death of Trust,” and quoting Warren Buffett talking about capitalism.

It happens I’m currently reading a very good book about Buffett I would recommend, called Buffett : The Making of An American Capitalist, by Roger Lowenstein. Anyone interested in learning how to invest successfully can learn a lot from it (and from Buffett’s successes and failures). Her piece seems to capture the very essence of the breakdowns which have occurred in our government (at least we thought it was supposed to be our government), in our economic system, our system of checks and balances, and in our households during the last 10 years or so. We need to take responsibility for it and clean it up, and I believe we are about to begin doing so.

Self serving message here: Her piece also points up why the Baby Boomers Retirement Club is unique: we are not tied to any one company’s products, philosophy, or pricing when it comes to advocating for our members. Gold Members of BBRC pay us a small monthly fee, and in return we spend huge amounts of time finding, screening and selecting the most astute recommendations, products and services we can find to serve your best interest.

So I wanted to share this powerful message with you from Laura Rowley:

“Finally, as Warren Buffett once said, “Trust is like the air we breathe. When it’s present, nobody really notices. But when it’s absent, everybody notices.” That giant sucking sound you hear is the American investor, gasping for breath.

The lessons of the sub-prime mortgage debacle and the Madoff scandal are clear: Understand where and how your money is invested. Know the policies and fees of your bank, insurer, credit card company, and 401(k) service provider, because there will always be an inherent conflict between your goal — building wealth — and the goals of companies and advisors that earn money on your wealth.

In a recent op-ed, ‘The Wall Street Journal’ suggested that “capitalism runs on trust.” But the truth is, capitalism runs on self-interest.

No broker will present you an investment or mortgage product without thinking of his or her commission. No rating agency will value the truth about an investment over the firm’s profitability. No government agency chief or member of Congress will protect the individual investor from the abuses of financial services companies without pondering the impact on his or her future employment or campaign contributions.

And no Treasury bailout czar will demand accountability for hundreds of billions of your tax dollars being showered upon the drunken captains of industry who ran the ship aground to begin with. As a Government Accountability Office report noted in December: “The standard agreement between Treasury and the participating institutions does not require that these institutions track or report how they plan to use, or do use, their capital investments.”  Folks, this has just got to stop, and we’ve got to make sure it stops.  Here’s to the advent of a new administration and a new way of doing things.  That, and I’ll have a lot more to talk about in this space as I continue the research and writing of my upcoming new book,Retire Without Fear.