Battling Wall Street greed

Businessman-author Leland Faust to speak Sunday|

“I’ve spent my entire career in the financial world,” says Leland Faust, founder of CSI Capital Management, financially representing more than a hundred professional sports, music and movie professionals. He is the author of the new book, “A Capitalist’s Lament: How Wall Street is Fleecing You and Ruining America.” “And I came to see,” he continues, having been reached at the offices of his Taylor & Faust law firm in San Francisco, “that, repeatedly, Wall Street was not acting in the best interests of its customers and clients.”

Thus the book, which has been praised for its fresh perspective, gripping back-office insights, and entertaining, edge-of-your-seat storytelling. Faust will be discussing the book, and the current financial state in America, on Sunday, March 18, at the Petaluma SRJC’s Carole L. Ellis Auditorium, in a special event co-sponsored by Petaluma’s LiteracyWorks and Copperfield’s Books.

Asked what inspired him to write the book, Faust replies, “Well, I thought the public needed to be aware of what Wall Street has been doing, so they can do two things. One - protect themselves, by taking appropriate individual actions, in dealing with their investments. And two - though it’s a lot more difficult - hopefully start kindling a discussion about the changes we need to make at the government level to make things better. I’m such a believer in the free-enterprise system, I hate to see it being taken advantage of, because that’s going to hurt us all.”

Faust admits that he’s received a fair number of hard questions about his book’s somewhat alarming subtitle, calling out Wall Street for “fleecing” customers and “ruining America,” but stands firm that such claims are not mere hyperbole intended to draw attention and sell books.

“The first part of that, ‘How Wall Street is Fleecing Us,’ just goes without saying,” he says. “If you are overpaying, if you are taking risks you don’t really know about, if things are being put into your account for the benefit of the firm, rather than for your own benefit, then yes, you are being fleeced. That’s the easy part to defend.”

In terms of ruining America, Faust insists that is not an overstatement.

“If pension plans are being taken advantage of, and are earning far less money than they should - for all the reasons I just mentioned - then somebody is obviously getting hurt by that,” he says. “Either pensions are going to go down, or if they are a government plan, they are going to get bailed out by higher taxes. If the get-rich-quick mentality continues to rule the system, and gambling your finances becomes more and more central to our society, it destroys the incentive to work hard, to build your financial wealth in a sensible, slow-and-steady way.”

During his talk this weekend, Faust will be addressing some of the steps regular individuals can take to protect their own finances, and ways the

“Making changes on the individual level is the easiest,” he says. “We can all do relatively simple things to protect ourselves a lot. For example, the first question you should ask any advisor is ‘Are you a fiduciary,’ meaning, by law do you have to put my interests as a client above your interests as the provider? If the answer to that is no, you say, ‘It’s been nice knowing you.’ If they say yes, you get that in writing. That one step will eliminate a great deal of the financial abuse that has been taking place.”

In other words, there are things we can all learn that will keep us safer when investing our finances. Changing the system as a whole, on the other hand, will be a whole lot harder, Faust allows, but is necessary if the dangerous trends currently being followed are ever to be reversed.

“It will require working together,” Faust says. “It will require organization. It will require a change of attitude and a move away from trying to make lots of money right now, regardless of the risk and danger. Those kinds of changes are not always easy, I know. But shifts like that have happened, and they have to happen again, if things are going to change for the better in this country.”

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