Senator Warren blasts kickbacks for brokers and subtly shames five of her fellow Senate Democrats.

[kpete]

Elizabeth Warren is Not Impressed with Your Diamond-Encrusted Ring

This week, Senator Warren blasted the insurance industry for the perks they give their annuities salespeople for peddling conflicted advice. Warren wrote in a statement that these “questionable practices” highlight the need for the very rule her five Senate colleagues are lobbying against. And she also sent 15 letters to annuity providers like Allianz and AIG, asking the companies for information about the rewards they offered to their brokers.

She didn’t stop there. In a Senate Banking Committee hearing on April 28, Senator Warren called out some of the luxurious kickbacks that annuities salespeople get:

“I got interested in what kinds of kickbacks some of these insurance salesman were getting when they pushed people to buy annuities. And what I found is pretty amazing.


I found free cruises luxury vacations at five-star resorts, an African Safari, private yacht tours of the Mediterranean, iPads, Mercedes-Benz leases, and — get this one — a diamond encrusted, NFL Superbowl style ring with a large ruby in the middle.”

While Senator Warren doesn’t mention her Democratic colleagues that have pushed back on the Labor Department’s proposal by name, her obsessive focus on the glitzy rewards the rule would prevent don’t make them look very good, either.



more:
https://medium.com/bull-market/elizabeth-warren-is-not-impressed-with-your-diamond-encrusted-ring-2b590b2feed7

[liberal_at_heart]

1. which Democratic Senators are fighting this?

[davidsilver]

2. Good for her!

[pinboy3niner]

3. They're identified at the link:

Bloomberg News reported that five Democratic Senators met with Department of Labor Secretary Tom Perez to argue against the conflict-of-interest rule. Present at the meeting were Senators John Tester (D-MN), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Joe Manchin (D-WV), Joe Donnelly (D-IN) and Gary Peters (D-MI). But while these Democrats are hauling Secretary Perez up to the Hill to castigate him about a rule that would help Americans save more for retirement, Warren is using her pulpit to undermine their opposition.

[liberal_at_heart]

4. good. They need to be called out.

[SoapBox]

5. Manchin...ugh.

[cascadiance]

7. Joe Donelly... I knew the Republican who he ran against in congress...

... from my days in high school when he was a neighbor of mine, who later became president of the Club for Growth, and heavily funded the campaign against Donelly in the Senate.

It's funny how Indiana state politics are always so f'd up that they can't get decent pols elected half the time.

Really wish John Cougar Mellencamp had run for Senate when it was discussed earlier. I think he'd be a far better senator for that state.

[Wilms]

6. ^