Hightower has made something of an art form out of the animated whiteboard drawing - using the technique in a few videos to help (literally) illustrate what they do. Its latest video takes the innocuous cartoon format and sharpens it into a dagger aimed right at the heart of Wall Street brokerages. It's an advertisement made for the general public, and they pull no punches, comparing brokers peddling "financial products" to selling toothpaste, but without the latter's transparancy of ingredients or consumer choice between different brands. “When you go to a brokerage firm to buy a financial product, you only see the financial products that they manufacture or that they’re getting paid to distribute. What they got is what you get,” says CEO Elliot Weissbluth in the ad's voiceover. Weissbluth thinks it's an appropriate time to take a message about what he sees as Wall Street's conflicted business model to the general public, given recent news around the Dept. of Labor's fiduciary proposal and the almost $300 million penalty levied against JP Morgan last month for failing to disclose conflicts in favoring its own, pricier, mutual funds for clients.
Micro-investment app Acorns and Jennifer Barrett, a former personal finance editor at CNBC, teamed up to launch Grow, a new digital financial magazine aimed at millennials. According to an Acorns poll, less than one-third of millennials are “very confident” with managing their finances. With articles on how to build a budget, paying of credit bard debt, negotiating a raise at work and interviews with celebrities like Ashton Kutcher, Barrett hopes to provide the tools needed to be financially successful. Barrett says, “Grow is working to close that financial literacy gap by addressing the questions many people have, but don’t know how to answer, and delivering advice in a compelling, digestible format. No finance degree required.”
Who is the Executor of Scott Weiland's Estate?
Mary Forsberg, the ex-wife of late Stone Temple Pilots lead singer Scott Weiland, recently filed a will signed in 2007, mere months before the couple divorced, that names her as executor of his estate, according to TMZ. Since Weiland remarried in 2013, recognition of this document would throw a wrench into any wealth transfer plan being considered by his current wife, Jamie Watchel, as she would have little power over the disposition. It’s unclear if Watchel will contest the will, but given that Weiland left behind an estate valued at $2 million, alongside an undisclosed amount in trust, and Forsberg’s strong negative feelings about Weiland as a father, a fight is likely inevitable.
A Status Symbol For Insecure Foodies
Only in Brooklyn can you find the latest in high-net-worth culinary cuisine: The Manila Social Club's gold-ube doughnut (ube is a type of purple yam commin in Filipino cuisine), topped with Cristal champagne icing, filled with an ube mousse and champagne jelly and covered with 24k gold. They cost $100 each and $1,000 for a dozen, making them only available to the top 1 percent within the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut tri-state area, or perhaps as a status symbol for insecure foodies. “It started as a tongue-in-cheek thing because we love doughnuts and we love champagne,” a spokesman for the restaurant told Time.com. “We started making them for friends of the restaurant, but then when people started posting pictures, orders took off like crazy.”
