Why the financial industry is (mostly) a ripoff

I’m halfway through Bill Browder’s excellent 2015 book, Red Notice, talking about his experiences as an investment banker and asset manager in Russia in the days and years after the fall of the iron curtain (circa the 1990s).

If you are like me and wonder why so many of the financial industry’s products are self-serving horse manure (one can only wish), here’s an excerpt from his book that shows you the incredible pressure these types of people are under to produce at any cost.

That’s why they’ll knowingly sell little old ladies’ pension funds mortgage-backed securities where the underlying assets are valueless.

It’s also why, in my view, most mutual funds, stocks, bonds, hedge funds, life insurance, option trades, and other highly complex financial products only benefit insiders, not you and me.

This is why I became a real estate investment and business coach–owning a high performing real estate portfolio and a PB4L (personal business for life)–things you own and control–are the only ways, in my experience, to protect and provide for yourself and your family for 3-generations.

Anyway, I uploaded that excerpt; see below.

Read it and weep…

Bruce M Firestone, B Eng (civil), M Eng-Sci, PhD
Real Estate Investment and Business coach
ROYAL LePAGE Performance Realty broker
Ottawa Senators founder
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bruce@brucemfirestone.com
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Image courtesy of: Christopher Thompson from Philadelphia, United States – Love logo ripoff, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2065003