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Judy Weil is a Seeking Alpha editor and an experienced journalist and translator. Judy covers the real estate and housing market for Seeking Alpha. She previously worked for Maariv Online and Ynet News.
  • The Democratization of Finance 1 comment
    May 4, 2009 02:42 AM

    From The Atlantic, an excerpt from President Obama's interview with NYT correspondent David Leonhardt:

    The democratization of finance is a concept popularized in at least two of Robert Shiller's books. (I'm going to assume Obama is referring to Shiller because this New Republic article tells me Shiller is a big hit in the White House.) But the democratization of finance has not much to do with Wall Street making lives better and a lot to do with citizens learning more about Wall Street. As Shiller writes (in the Subprime Solution), democratizing finance is about "extending the application of sound financial principles to a larger and larger segment of society and using all the modern technology at our disposal to achieve that goal." It implies that we should do things like subsidize financial advice.

    What do you think?

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This post has 1 comment:

  •  
    Hi Judy!

    Glad you instablogged this topic, I think it's extremely timely.

    I don't believe the government should subsidize financial advice. The idea that people need to be protected from the vagaries of the marketplace by an agency (or agencies) that will 'advise' them about the risks and rewards of investment strategies is another example of having the government become the parent of the people, rather than its servant.

    And while we may have already passed the point of no return, the essential lesson that people should have learned is to do their own research about investment decisions, whether to buy a mutual fund or a car or a house.

    Too often, we expect to be bailed out for our bad decisions (of course, that's what happened with Chrysler and GM, but that's another story, for another time), and aren't expected to assume responsibility for our actions, or the consequences of them.

    There's enough information available to even the casual investor to allow most people to make informed decisions about their investments.

    In short, it's not necessary to subsidize financial advice. There's a wide array of data available to any investor, both here on SA and elsewhere.

    Appreciate your thoughts, and your response!

    ATB,

    Bill
    2009 Jul 02 05:12 PM Reply
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