I was very pleased to hear this story on NPR that a new portrait was just unveiled in the U.S. National Gallery at the Smithsonian: none other than Slope patron saint George Carlin. The image they used is below. I sure wish George was still with us today; he’d have a lot to say to help us see things more clearly.
Slope of Hope Blog Posts
Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.
Financial Services Industry Eats Clients
By Biiwii
Ref: Why the big broker behind your financial adviser might be working against you
Tell me, which of them (the big brokers and investment houses) warned anyone about it being time to sell in 2000, or in 2007? There are exceptions out there, especially in smaller boutique style shops. But generally speaking, this thing we call Wall Street (big firms and the media that is their propaganda arm) exists to sell people the dream, then mark it up, front run it (in one way or another, legally or otherwise) extract fees from it and ultimately fleece it on the way down again (as regular people puke a tanking market and pay trading commissions for the privilege).
Here I cue up the old story about when I bought my first and only BMW (it was fine, but really it was not me) back in 2002. The deal was done and I sat with the business manager to finalize the transaction. He was a kid who had been fired from Merrill Lynch not 2 years earlier for keeping his clients in cash and totally safe at the market top. Problem was, he was not turning tricks, err I mean commissions for Merrill. All done.