Stop Telling Me to Calm Down: Character Is the Only Metric That Matters in Politics and Finance

They Always Say the Same Thing

‘It’s just politics, Chris. You can’t get so upset.’ I hear this constantly. And you know what the financial version of that line is? ‘That’s just how the industry works.’ Both statements are excuses used by people who benefit from you accepting dishonesty as normal. I do not accept it. Not from Wall Street, and not from Washington.

Having lived on Long Island and Queens; surrounded by people from Whitestone, Marine Park, Astoria, Bayside, Bayshore, Huntington, places where you got spotted immediately if you were running a game. You did not last long being a phony in those communities. That instinct is not something I left behind. I brought it with me into investment banking, into consumer advocacy, and into this program. It is the same instinct that tells me when a financial product is designed to enrich the advisor instead of the client, and it is the same instinct that fires when a politician says one thing and does another.

The Godfather Had It Right

I thought about Peter Clemenza from The Godfather today. Specifically the moment he mentions that you should have stopped Hitler at Munich. Small problems that go unchecked become catastrophic ones. I see this constantly in both finance and politics.

• Small lies become systemic fraud. A little fee padding becomes a FINRA enforcement action.
• ‘Everyone does it’ is not a defense. Not in court, and not at my kitchen table.
• Ignoring character early is how you end up with catastrophic consequences later. True for advisors, true for elected officials.
• Insiders breaking ranks are worth watching. When someone like Karl Rove writes an editorial in the Wall Street Journal explaining why he is crossing party lines, something significant is happening beneath the surface.

The Rove Factor and What It Signals

Karl Rove, the man George W. Bush called the architect, did not build a reputation over decades by being reckless with his political relationships. When a consummate insider starts making noise about character over party loyalty, that is a signal. It is the political equivalent of a longtime Wall Street veteran publicly questioning the practices of their own firm. It does not happen unless something has crossed a line that cannot be ignored.

I am not here to tell you who to vote for. I am here to tell you that the framework you use to evaluate a financial advisor should be the same framework you use to evaluate anyone who is asking for your trust. What is their track record? Do their actions match their words? Who benefits from the story they are telling you?

Same Game, Different Arena

The Wall Street machinery is very good at dressing up self-interest as advice. The political machinery is very good at dressing up self-interest as public service. The packaging is different but the mechanism is identical. Find someone who benefits from your confusion, wrap it in language that sounds reasonable, and count on you being too busy or too tired to dig deeper.

I dig deeper. That is the entire point of this program. And if that makes me too intense for some people, that is a trade I made a long time ago and I have zero regrets about it.