HUH???

Those of you who are relying not on defined-benefit pension plans but on 401(k) plans for financial security in your retirement years may be surprised to learn that investment advisers do not have a “fiduciary duty” to prioritize your best interests over the best interests of their firms when making choices about how to invest your money.

That paragraph-long sentence may seem relatively innocuous. But. It. Is. Not.

Indeed, if you are depending on a 401(k) plan for retirement income, it should be cause for having to rely on a Benadryl tablet in order to sleep tonight.

Just in case you didn’t know, absent your financial/investment adviser voluntarily becoming a fiduciary, he/she is neither legally bound nor required to act in your best interest per how your funds are invested. As Robert Hiltonsmith, a retirement security expert at the Demos think-tank, puts it, advisers who are not acting under the restraints of “fiduciary duty” are, almost by definition, working in “their firms’ best interest, which is not yours.”

The most obvious example of how your financial adviser can leverage the best interests of his/her firm---as opposed to your best interests---when making an investment choice?

A preponderant number of 401(k) non-fiduciary brokers pad the profits of their firms at clients’ expense by selling those clients on plans that produce higher fees for those firms. Those higher fees, of course, come out of clients’ 401(k) income and, over time, can significantly and exponentially limit both the growth and potential growth of their retirement plans. Worse, clients are seldom cognizant that they’ve undergone, for years on end, an annual shearing.

The Labor Department, in 2010, took a shot at protecting consumers by attempting to put into effect a policy/rule that would force a “fiduciary duty” on investment advisers who manage retirement accounts. As fiduciaries, they would be bound by law to act solely on the basis of their clients’ best interests, with no consideration given to potential profits for their firms.

Unsurprisingly, the financial sector---via its multitudinous lobbyists bearing wads of campaign cash and its primarily Republican devotees who benefit the most from said wads---engaged in an apoplectic protest. And, unsurprisingly, the GOP Clown Show in the U.S. House blocked and has continued to block the Labor Department from implementing the rule, forcing it to be tabled.

Consumer advocates, however, encouraged by real-life, real-time middle- and working-class supporters like Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown, Chris Van Hollen and Bernie Sanders, have not been willing to forget that, since the policy/rule was only tabled, it was still, well, on the table.

Hence, Democrats are undertaking a new push for implementation of the rule by the Labor Department as a negotiating point per the GOP absurdity known as the CROmnibus---a budget bill that would fund some parts of the government through 2015 and fund other parts of the government (read, the parts the GOP doesn’t like) only for the next few weeks.

This is where the fun begins.

Given that they are far more interested in the profits of the financial sector than in protecting the retirement funds of middle- and working-class Americans, Republicans do not want this policy/rule put into place. But they do not want to go on record as voting to terminate the provision that provides that protection. Instead, they want to terminate the provision---and its protections---but hide their action by burying it in the legislative morass of a budget bill.

Thus, instead of a transparent, straight-up vote which would force them to be honest about killing this piece of consumer protection, Republicans are seeking a budget rider that would transfer jurisdiction over the policy/rule from the Labor Department to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Why? Because anyone following the actions of the SEC for the past two decades knows that it has morphed from a regulatory agency intended to protect ordinary Americans from the excesses of Wall Street/Big Banks/Big Money/Big Business into a toothless rubber-stamp for 21st-century robber-barons.

Sorry, did I state it too strongly? Or, not strongly enough?

If the fiduciary policy/rule is placed under the aegis of the SEC, it will still be technically alive. But, though in force, its provisions will never be enforced. Republicans can then deny having killed the policy/rule and, when middle- and working-class Americans realize how much it cost them to be represented by non-fiduciary advisers, they can indignantly “blame” the SEC for its protections not being provided.

Will they be lying---let’s not fool around with more cushioned words and phrases---to middle- and working-class Americans being fleeced by financial advisers more concerned with corporate profits than client profits?

Technically, no.

But, in real-life and real-time, Y.E.S.