Mutton in Deplorable thoughts

Once upon just yesterday ago,
there was a law to protect the people great and small
from those who would rob them of their life savings
and leave them destitute in their old age.
You would not think that there needed to be a law
that explicitly compelled financial advisors to put their clients’ financial welfare first,
but there is.

Excuse me, I misspoke.
There was.

Our most powerful billionaire businessman has just signed an executive order
which eliminates a regulation called the fiduciary rule.
This one rule protected people from being fleeced out of their retirement savings
by the people they trusted to help them invest wisely
for when they no longer had earned incomes.
Although I am simplifying it greatly
(because I, like almost everyone else in the country, am not a financial expert),
this regulation compelled financial advisors to put
the interests of their clients first.

Under this rule, among other things,
it was criminal for your 401k retirement advisors to steer clients
towards higher risk investments simply because they were paid kickbacks
to promote these risky investments.
This regulation stated explicitly that the role of the financial advisor
was to help their clients keep and grow their life’s savings,
not to line their own pockets at the risk and expense of those clients.

Sounds like a pretty good regulation to me.
I mean, helping people to protect the biggest investment of their lives,
helping keep countless vulnerable aging people
from being scammed out of the safety net they worked hard their entire lives to save,
so that they could remain financially independent
and not be a burden on their families or society,
not allowing the experts they hire to legally rob them
and force them into irreversible poverty in their waning years,
well, hell, isn’t that just what government is supposed to help prevent?
It just seems like a no-brainier to me.
Protect the the people from being robbed by those they trust
And keep the elderly poverty rate lower.
Sounds like a win-win to me.

Now why in the hell would a president strike down such a regulation?
I mean, it’s just a bizarre move.
It’s like legally erasing the Hippocratic Oath from the practice of medicine.

”Hey Docs.
If Big Pharma offers to pay you royally to prescribe incredibly expensive sugar pills
to cancer patients instead of trying to save their lives,
well, that’s just great by the government.
You go for it, with our blessings!
You are no longer legally compelled to protect the lives
or ease the sufferings of those who trust in you.
Enjoy and prosper.”
No, that wouldn’t make any kind of sense,
And yet repealing the fiduciary rule is the same thing
Just with financial advisers.

Why would a president,
why would this president,
do this?

It can’t be that he’s trying to protect those vaunted “people”
he so bombastically continues to claim he loves.
The only people that are going to be helped by this particular deregulation
are the predatory financial sectors -
retirement fund advisors, private equity firms, Wall Street.

What could be his motivation?
Hmmmm.
He’s a businessman.
That’s supposed to be good for the country and the people financially, right?
That’s what he convinced his Kool-Aid drinkers.

Remember, though, that the business of business is
to make as much money as possible by any means possible.
(And that doesn’t restrict business to just legal means,
if illegal or immoral methods can be found to get around the laws,
in the words of a famous businessman, “that just makes them smart!”)
The concept of protecting the people is irrelevant to the conduct of business.
If people get in the way of profit, people be damned.

That’s where government regulations are supposed to come in.
Laws and regulations are government’s tools to protect the people
from business’ lack of social conscience.

During the campaign he screamed that she
was in league with those evil money grabbers on Wall Street,
but now he’s populated his administration from that very place.
It appears as though he simply decided to staff his financial posts
by not considering anyone who doesn’t have Goldman Sachs on his resume’.

I am not surprised by this move in the least.
It amazes me not in the least that he has, with the stroke of a pen,
created a vulnerability that leaves the his beloved common man
defenseless against financial vultures who are now free
to consider their clients’ lifetime savings as easy pickings.

The man issuing these orders,
the man who promised he would protect and better the general populace,
this is the huckster who sold Trump “University” to people who trusted
that he would show them the way to wealth,
when all he wanted was to enrich himself with their money.
This is a man already proven to be a con artist.

Of course he has an interest in striking down laws that protect the rubes,
Making them easier pickings for himself & his ilk.
This is what he does.
This is what he has always done.

This is a man who is interested in the general populace for two reasons only -
To funnel as much money away from them
and into his and his associates’ pockets as possible
AND
To get the idiot sheep to thank and adore him while he is doing it.
He has an absolutely pathetic need to be worshipped by those upon whom he treads.

The saddest thing of all is that he is going to achieve the first goal without question.
His history of succeeding through cheating those who trusted and depended
on him at lesser levels encourages him to make the real killing
now that he’s hit the highest point of power with the greatest opportunity for plunder.

As for the second goal,
the quest to be loved by the sheep he’s slaughtering -
We’ve gone past the shearing analogy now.
At this level, we’re not going to be wool-bearers.
We’re destined to be mutton.
- the kool aid drinkers refuse to see what’s going on.
They still love and support him unconditionally.

He said he’d cut regulations and
he’s cutting regulations!
Yay!
Nevermind that some of those regulations are there to protect your stupid stupid asses.
Nevermind that regulations are what keeps business from eating you alive.
The orange one said it,
so it must be good and righteous and true.

Those sheep who are aware they’re being butchered
cannot bleat loud enough to wake the brain-dead sheep.
Those poor idiots think the big shiny knives are for cutting grain for all to feast upon
rather than for cutting the throats of sheep,
the aware objecting ones and the stupid stupid willing ones alike.

My 401k,
my retirement’s lifesblood,
is managed by a financial advisory mega-company
in whom I had a normal amount of faith.
I’m very worried now.
I have no foundation of knowledge in the financial sector,
but I’m going to have to figure out what to with my largest financial asset
without suspect expert assistance.

And this is before he and his cronies get to work
on “saving” the other half of my retirement plan,
Social Security.

We are all headed for the slaughter.
I’m bleating at the top of my lungs.

Last updated February 20, 2017