News

If you’re looking to educate yourself about the Eurozone crisis, or want to bring clients up-to-speed on the situation, the Wall Street Journal has just released a fantastic new 23-minute documentary on the history and impact of the ongoing sovereign debt crisis across the Atlantic. With cogent commentary from bureau chiefs on the scene in Europe, the short video puts the crisis into perspective and gets to the key issues fueling the fiscal calamity abroad. (Video after clicking More) Read More

Consultant: Start Your 2012 Planning With Some ‘Cold, Hard’ Truth – Then Get to Work

The end of the year usually prompts us to set goals for the next year. But often we begin the task with unrealistic expectations and/or fuzzy goals. If you’re finalizing your business plan for 2012, take an honest look in the mirror, for starters. Because continuing to do what you’ve been doing likely won’t produce dramatically results. So says Steve Tobak, managing partner of Invisor Consulting, a business consulting firm, who recently penned a piece about “improving your prospects” in the New Year.

Here are a few of his suggestions.  Read More

Last month veteran advisor Dennis Gibb’s “Open Letter to the Occupy Wall Street Crowd“ inspired passionate debate in the comment section here at RIA Central. In response to his career story and advice to the protesters, registered investment advisors shared their heart-felt reflections on whether hard work still pays off – or if the “system” has become impossibly stacked against the proverbial “little guy.” Gibb’s advice for young “99 percenters” to evacuate their tents and get to work struck a chord with many advisors, but not all shared his optimistic, up-by-your-bootstraps worldview.

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One of the more fascinating political and cultural developments in the last three years is the emergence of two spontaneous populist uprisings taking aim at powerful business and government elites. At the surface level, the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street share nothing in common.

This popular video by NYU law professor and author Richard Epstein literally illustrates the vast difference in political ideology between the largely conservative Tea Party and the largely progressive Occupy movement.
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Leon Cooperman is the chairman of Omega Advisors and was a one-time Goldman Sachs asset management chief. This week he penned the following letter to President Obama imploring him to abandon his class warfare rhetoric.

OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

 

November 28, 2011

 

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20500

 

Dear Mr. President,

 

It is with a great sense of disappointment that I write this. Like many others, I hoped that your election would bring a salutary change of direction to the country, despite what more than a few feared was an overly aggressive social agenda. And I cannot credibly blame you for the economic mess that you inherited, even if the policy response on your watch has been profligate and largely ineffectual. (You did not, after all, invent TARP.) I understand that when surrounded by cries of “the end of the world as we know it is nigh”, even the strongest of minds may have a tendency to shoot first and aim later in a well-intended effort to stave off the predicted apocalypse.

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