Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry
Channel: New America
Date: 2013-03-20

Pound Foolish:
Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry

For the past several decades, the personal finance industry has convinced Americans that we are the sole masters of our financial fates. Even as stagnating wages and rising costs of necessities have eaten away at many families' bottom line, voices within the industry chant that enough grit, the right advice, and the latest tools will cure what ails their financial lives. In Pound Foolish, journalist and former financial columnist Helaine Olen argues that, instead of an elixir, the American people have been sold a bill of goods.

Olen critiques the personal finance industrial complex and makes the case that our systems and structures for achieving financial security are broken or badly damaged, and that profiteers have exploited the desire to for personal financial control and turned it into a profit center for their own benefit.

The New America Foundation's Asset Building Program held this conversation with the author as she shares her story of America's love affair with personal finance and the challenges we all face in dealing with and talking about money.

PARTICIPANTS

Helaine Olen
Author, Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry
Blogger, "Where Life Meets Money," Forbes.com

Justin King
Federal Policy Liaison, Asset Building Program, New America Foundation

http://newamerica.net/events/2013/pound_foolish