Financial experts and lay persons

[sasguru]

Is it racist to prefer a bit more whitespace?

Nah just means you're either thick or badly educated, and can't parse an English paragraph, a skill that was de-rigeur in English O-level prior to the great dumbing down that occurred in the early 90s.

HTH.

[PAH]

A paragraph, by nature, is surrounded by white space.

Stop being so lazy and press the return key a few more times.

[sasguru]

A paragraph, by nature, is surrounded by white space.

Maybe but there is no white space within a paragraph, which is a group of sentences relating to a common theme.
Stop being so lazy and try to follow a logical argument

[Mich the Tester]

Nah just means you're either thick or badly educated, and can't parse an English paragraph, a skill that was de-rigeur in English O-level prior to the great dumbing down that occurred in the early 90s.

HTH.

There you go again, telling people they're thick when actually they are possibly intelligent lay persons.

[Mich the Tester]

What financial professionals do you mean: traders, risk analysts, quants, financial product salespeople, accountants, IT finance professionals etc. etc?

I don't know. The industry is quite opaque to me. Perhaps you are right that western governments caused this by pandering to the voters who wanted new schools, hospitals, roads, railways, benefits, wars agains the baddies, speed bumps and border controls but didn't want to pay taxes to finance all that. But that's happened. The important thing now is how to get out of this mess without society declining into anarchy, and frankly I struggle to take people seriously when they call me thick.

[OwlHoot]

I would have considerably more time and respect for financial services professionals if they would actually take the initiative to work together, in partnership with governments, to sort out the mess in the global financial system ...

That's not their job. Their job is to make money, for themselves and their customers.

[Mich the Tester]

That's not their job. Their job is to make money, for themselves and some of their customers.

ftfy, possibly

[OwlHoot]

"Finance professionals" simply responded to the demand, stoked in some cases by politicians like Clinton, who demanded mortgages for the poor.

WHS - Been saying it for years, and not "some" cases but "most if not all" cases. The banks were initially very reluctant to lend to high risk groups.

If it hadn't been for the finance professionals, the tulip would have hit the fan much earlier.

[lilelvis2000]

They guy in the office next door is an IFA and essentially he just looks at some charts and the goals of the customers...punches in a few keys on to his software and comes up with a recommendation. If the customer takes him up on it...he usually earns about £400 in commission minimum. And when couples divorce and their pension needs splitting...cha ching!

The commissions are quite good, which makes me wonder how much the companies themselves are making. He does agree with me that a pension fund which is charging about 3% pa admin charge means that the investor ain't making a penny. You're better off doing things on your own, buying ETFs or stocks yourself and holding on to them.

[sasguru]

... and frankly I struggle to take people seriously when they call me thick.

Why? Do you think you're God's gift, intellectually?
Thickness is relative.