Please Chairman Jon Tester

Sent this missive to the “dirt farmer” senator who somehow managed to wrangle chairmanship of the Senate Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance and Investment.   He farmed and got himself a music degree and has barely a penny to his name.  The US Senate is an incredible meritocracy.  Waiting for a reply.  Tick, Tock.

Dear Mr. Tester, 

 I am a constituent, retired and an individual investor, very ably and happily managing my own financial assets. I read on Valentines Day that you are pushing the SEC to impose a uniform fiduciary duty on brokers vis a vis their brokerage clients.

That is a horrible idea.  I maintain brokerage accounts with a discount broker.  I don’t need nor want you or a broker to tell me what financial decisions and investments I should or should not make.  I don’t want to pay for useless advice.  And I most vehemently object to sharing my private financial and personal information, which are necessary to consummate a fiduciary relationship, with crooks that populate the financial sector or with any of your conflicted, hand wringing financially illiterate nanny state interlopers, who are looking for ways to carve continuous fees from my hard earned, saved and invested assets. 

 Anyone who needs help can pay for financial advice.  Even you, Senator Tester, could pay, though I would recommend against it, since according to your Financial Disclosure Statements, you have managed over three decades of adulthood to save essentially nothing.  If you had any sense of decency you would clean up your own financial house before you told others how to build and manage theirs. 

 I look forward to your full and substantive reply. 

Sincerely, 

Grady Foster

Bozeman, MT 

September 13, 2013:  Tick, tock, tick, tock, 209 days and counting, no response.