Naked Capitalism has the article Congressional Black Caucus Still Trying to Hurt Their Constituents By Killing the Labor Department Fiduciary Rule.

This is an insane argument. In essence, asset managers are saying that they only way they can afford to offer financial advice to low and middle-income earners is if they screw them. If you force them to act in their clients’ interest, it won’t become cost-effective. So CBC members want to protect their constituents’ ability to get sham advice contrary to their interest? There is no question that these constituents would be better off with no advice at all.

I remember back to the days when I was writing and supporting simulation programs for the semi-conductor industry. Richard Newton, a professor at the University of California at Berkley, was a leading light in the academic world in this field. In discussing questions of accuracy when solving difficult equations in a simulator he often remarked that it was better to get no answer than the wrong answer. In other words, you could employ all sorts of techniques to get the simulator to find the answer in difficult situations, but you must guard against any technique that could come to the wrong answer and present it to the user as a solution to the equations. Better to just tell the user that the simulator was unable to solve the equations.