Financial Services Hoot

News Correspondent, Angel Y. Dayan, CPA, EA

I was thinking if I should even touch this but here I am for I want to protect you. It tells me a sign when there is difficulty in people’s lives to save money.  I get bombarded with financial services representatives and consultants of all sorts, trying to connect to get clients for their products and services.   Yes, I could help them but sometimes I am not so sure, especially on this one. It is either in insurance services help or retirement planning directions or some form of financial services concern that people may need assistance.  I recall in a good economy, these financial or insurance consultants never bother to reach out to struggling accountants.  Clients most likely just came to them like swarming bees and that was so easy.  But that was then with lessons to learn and those“good days” are gone. I understand people’s hidden sentiments today on a slower paced business, in a very fragile economy that we are all trying to survive with.  I could still send referrals, yes, whenever there will a need for it as I am asked for help. But why am I also being recruited to join this business?

Be one like them, “you bean counter”guy was my nagging message. I just cannot join and that makes it sad for my recruiter.  One group with a weird “marketing hoot” of an upbeat new age Sky Walker to tune up the recruits’ voice enthusiasm in this business was so proud to flout its client sign-up accomplishments.   But there was no food or drinks to partake on kindly, (an omen of struggle) that tells me how difficult it has become.  The synchronized half-baked-smiles in photo op moments could be interpreted in body language as made up; seemingly the opposite of the real dollar that actually hit the bank account. The recruits’ demographics are, interestingly, Filipinos, Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Orientals, with a few Hispanics etc. All are Americans now but are all mostly browns, with a few blacks.  They all “hum the hoot” like an owl but the next show I predict could be commission checks flying all over the room, maybe with a good snack in the room. It has not happened yet at this time. It did before. Bogus checks and testimonies like during the good old financial services company days may come back to time.  It may be like sounds of hell from the dead.  God forbid bogus checks could become like confetti. I will tell you more as I listen to the scheme and rub more shoulders.

But then I also wonder if all insurance in all products has some form of Ponzi scheme twist, like social security, and Medicare contributions, and some gambling games in Las Vegas.I think so and really sorry. Maybe you know this and I am just playing dumb. We’ve learned to entertain these government programs over the years and we cannot trust them no more.

What have we got good going in this country these days that will help more people survive the economy? Nothing much. Maybe, this new financial services hoot?     Tell me.  Something real will come up.  Definitely! Something I hope would be good to do and reliable. But not yet. Tell me more about your checking account deposits, every week on this program.  Or maybe your income tax return that I could verify with the IRS files.  Or your checkbook memo, if you are writing it anyway, since it will tell me a lot in discovery.

They tell me also I could get to join a vacation cruise in the waters of some faraway lands.  Then, it would be “Life living it.”Very enticing!  The Thomas Aquinas in me may be buried like I should eat my words or I should know better.  But I graduated from the University after this name.  I am the most cynical accountant you could ever find.I was trained to be a skeptic in my career. Skepticism you should know is an accountant’s jargon. It is objective. Maybe I am a crazy accountant! Just kidding.

Something is also telling me that do not seem right.  God I hope is leading here. People take the difficult role of taking exams to be able to do the financial services and insurance business legal.  The fact that others may have done this business without a license in the past would again be a discovery for me.  I see different title descriptions on business cards, i.e., Associate, Marketing Director, Independent Representative. My feeling should better not be true. I should be wrong. If my suspicion is right, then we could still be in a mess in certain levels of the financial services business in this country, but the “hoot” may be appropriate to lift up broken spirits for those who got lost in the corporate world transition/translation that have no jobs but found a new economic vehicle to put their time on.  It was good tears for the hooter. It provides employment.  May all the best be with World Marketing Group. I catch that, Marketers.  But my caution would be then if you are really serious to be into this business, get all the licenses you could become to be and add them to your last name as initials.  It gives respect and you get mine. Not having anything after your last name makes someone inadequate, a non-organic hoot-aromatic hired financial representative rep, masked as financial services consultant, some quacking peons and owls of the huge financial conglomerate from another country (Canada) with the capability to financial Ponzi-twist in America, or to shout the hoot out of Duluth, Georgia into Anaheim, California and elsewhere more than an owl could.  It was in fact annoying to me. Have fun you guys and earn a legal living but do what is right!  Someone whispered to me like an Eve serpent, “One person makes a million dollars in this business” Yes, if it is true, I blew to the wind;“ let me verify her income tax returns straight from the IRS records.”I got introduced later to the million dollar lady but she does not dress or appeared a bejeweled lady to exude like a millionaire. My inward parts groan in a whisper, “Please do not do that to me, or sing tralala.  It creates distrust and destroys whole personality.”But still no word came out from my mouth out of respect. It was quiet afterwards. Eve’s apple thrown at my face was a million dollars. It stirs greed—some evil meditations of the heart. I went home late that night still reverberated by the “hoot.”  Why was I there anyway? A client invited me. Well, it was something to write about in this column and for the “Dog” (Pinoy Watchdog) with nothing lost, but all gained to teach you to be careful with hooters.  We may have new herds of financial sheeps/wolves in town again with hoot sounds. Are they for real? I hope so. I have seen something similar before that blew away. Tell me more.

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Posted by PinoyWatchDog.com on July 5, 2012. Filed under FINANCE. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry