Senator Elizabeth Warren reacted to President Trump’s rollback of the fiduciary rule Friday, releasing a statement that angrily took the chief executive to task for making it easier for “investment advisers to cheat you.”
“Donald Trump talked a big game about Wall Street during his campaign—but as President, we’re finding out whose side he’s really on,” the Massachusetts Democrat wrote. “Today, after literally standing alongside big bank and hedge fund CEOs, he announced two new orders—one that will make it easier for investment advisors to cheat you out of your retirement savings, and another that will put two former Goldman Sachs executives in charge of gutting the rules that protect you from financial fraud and another economic meltdown.”
“The Wall Street bankers and lobbyists whose greed and recklessness nearly destroyed this country may be toasting each other with champagne, but the American people have not forgotten the 2008 financial crisis” she continued, “and they will not forget what happened today.”
Warren also released a report Friday, provocatively titled “Villas, Castles and Vacations” detailing what she says are the kinds of “prizes and kickbacks currently offered to retirement advisers for selling certain financial products, regardless of whether those products are in the best interest of consumers.”
Noting the new rule was to take effect to supposedly prevent conflicts of interest, she lamented Trump delay in its implementation.
“The Labor Department’s Conflict of Interest Rule will end the kinds of kickbacks and incentives that put families’ retirement savings at risk,” she wrote upon the release of the report. “The DOL rule protects consumers and creates a level playing field in the market for financial advisers who want to do right by their clients. Instead of doing favors for the big bank CEOs he invited to the West Wing this morning, President Trump should stand with working families by protecting this critical rule.”
The report allegedly shows that “kickbacks in the financial industry, particularly in the annuities industry, remain widespread, and that the DOL Conflicts-of-Interest Rule will eliminate the worst of these industry kickbacks.”