Journalists Continue to Miss the Mark

Robert Powell recently wrote an article for MarketWatch where he talked about annuities. I stop short of further description of his article because his writing was such a random conglomeration of previous misleading statements, that his words had no cohesion and really did not make any significant point. His writing is vague and filled with generalizations, but with no facts or details to support any of his statements. It was as if he has been gathering all the rhetorical criticisms, we are used to hearing the NASD use, in their propaganda campaign against fixed and indexed annuities, and he tried to piece them all together and call it an article. While I think he was trying to point out that bad sales practices hurt people who are sold annuities improperly, HIS misinformation and misleading statements are actually what is hurting the buying public. The point I want to address, with the mention of this piece, is that articles are regularly being published in leading financial journals and papers, apparently, without the editors requiring that the claims and statements of the writers be backed up with supporting facts and details. By quoting or restating the propaganda of the NASD, the writers are claiming to have done research, but for all of their claims of the unsuitability of indexed annuities for seniors, they have yet to produce a single senior client who can show that the sales documents they received, and the disclosure forms they had to sign during the application process for an indexed annuity, were not consistent with the terms of the final contact. Claims by these writers, of high commission and surrender charges equating to realized losses by annuity purchasers, are just not true and these accusations have never been supported by real life examples in any article I have yet to see. Responsible journalism seems to have taken a back seat, in regards to indexed annuities, and it appears that the financial journalists are willing participants in the NASD propaganda campaign to reacquire the loss of $24 billion in assets each of these past two years to the very popular indexed annuities.