Momentum is building in favor of fee transparency Dumbfounded by advice from FPA on stimulus package

I read with a bit of bemusement the letters to the editor that your Jan. 14 editorial on…

I read with a bit of bemusement the letters to the editor that your Jan. 14 editorial on 12(b)-1 fees elicited.

I am ambivalent as to how advisers choose to get paid. However, I am passionate about fee transparency, full disclosure and serving in the client’s best interests.

Momentum is slowly building in favor of all these principles, both within the adviser community and from consumers. The contention that more disclosure is too complicated for investors or too onerous for advisers is trite and speaks volumes about why more financial professionals are leaving the brokerage world for independent practices.

Mike Palmer

Principal

The Trust Company of the South

Raleigh, N.C.

I am dumbfounded by the press release issued by the Financial Planning Association advising the public to use the money that they may get as part of a stimulus package to build up their balance sheet.

The president and House have decided that it is best to target spending and the velocity of money, and their plan will have little chance of success if people don’t spend it.

Obviously, if someone is at the brink of eviction and the check received from the government will stave off that event, then don’t spend it. But that applies to less than 0.75% of the people who receive checks.

I think that if the [Denver-based] FPA, with all its research capabilities and teams of economists and statisticians, had said that it would prefer a different measure to have been enacted, it would have been a professional statement. As it is, it has come out and said, “Hey, folks, let’s make sure that the government’s plan doesn’t work and that they have just wasted their $150 billion silver bullet.”

I am so glad that I dropped my membership.

Morris Armstrong

Owner

Armstrong Financial Strategies

Danbury, Conn.