“EXPRESSWAY…TO YOUR (WALLET)…”

3/10/09

Those of you who watch CNBC regularly are doubtless familiar with the series of Ameriprise commercials featuring an aging hipster doofus trying to accomplish the impossible task of convincing members of my generation that they are not only cool, but erudite, attractive, worldly, and sophisticated while a headache inducing sound track pounds away in the background. All of these commercials are laughably ridiculous for a number of reasons, but the latest perfectly encapsulates the source of at least one of my generation’s financial troubles.

In this particular ad, the self-appointed arbiter of all things cool, doubtless in response to the evaporation of my generation’s sure thing IRAs, 401Ks, etc., asks

“Did you think the road to retirement was an expressway?”

This expert then says the viewers “need a plan” and recommends seeing an Ameriprise “financial advisor,” presumably to resume their trek on the road to riches, or at least away from abject poverty.

Hmm…

People are responsible for their own actions, and, most saliently, for their financial decisions, as the Pontificator ceaselessly argues. That having been said, can anyone blame my fabulous generation for thinking that the road to retirement was an expressway when financial firms, most notably and least credibly Ameriprise, have been spending scores, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars convincing people of just that? For years, “financial planners” have twisted and perverted one study by Ibbotson on historical returns of the stock market to convince people that, given enough time, the stock market is a sure thing and if one just religiously puts money into stocks, the market works like a bank account on gorilla biscuits. Using compounding rates of anywhere from 10% to 15% (depending on how desperately they need the sale), such “financial professionals” have convinced millions of apparently gullible Americans (Just look at our public officials and the flotsam and jetsam on which we blow money we don’t have if you have any doubts concerning the gullibility and sheep-like instincts of the American public.) that if they put everything in the stock market (in, of course, the funds that pay the highest commissions to the “planner”),they, like the Soviet defense forces in Dr. Strangelove, can’t possibly miss. Those of you familiar with the outcome of such a strategy in that classic 1964 Kubrick film are not at all surprised that a similar approach to investing has yielded similar consequences.

Ameriprise is only being singled out in this particular post because of the aforementioned most inane of a long line of excerebrose commercials featuring perhaps the least credible dispenser of financial advice in the long and sordid history of the “financial planning” business. While there are many good and valuable people in the brokerage and financial consulting and planning businesses (some of whom doubtless work for Ameriprise), they are hopelessly outnumbered by the charlatans and mountebanks that have been attracted to that profession by the twin prospects of quick and abundant cash and a near complete absence of accountability. Millions of people whose former careers involved selling shoes or fast food go around calling themselves “financial planners” and the results have been predictable. Now, the same people whose dearth of anything resembling financial knowledge and background is matched only by their dearth of shame are offering plans to get their witless “investors” out of the trouble into which they were plunged by the same “financial planners.”

The sad thing is that Ameriprise and many others (like the local real estate expert, whose expertise in finance hopefully, but probably doesn’t, exceeds his expertise with English diction, who once counseled levering up to buy investment property, including now valueless hotel rooms (“Those who focus only on eliminating debt, rather than building wealth, will never get wealthy.”), and who, most recently, has been promoting his sure fire “get out of debt” formula) have prospered with such a strategy, and I, for one, am betting that they will continue to do so.

After all, they are targeting the always vigilant and thoughtful American public.