I hate to admit it, but I watch soap operas. Yes, they are silly and improbable but sometimes they can be a window into public perceptions.
Take, for example, a recent storyline on The Young and the Restless. Finally, the audience knows why the town mean girl, Phyllis, is so malicious. What turned her into such an off-the-charts nasty nutcase? Her father, as it turns out, was a financial advisor who swindled old people and threw her out when she turned him in. (You have to suspend disbelief that she would have the wherewithal to do so as a teenager.) Ah, now we know the real villain.
Interesting that the writers thought of that particular profession to convey what a dastardly person her father was. Do financial advisors truly have such a poor, and undeserved, reputation in the public's eyes?
Recently, LifeHealthPro.com blogger Michael Ham wrote about the case of a California insurance salesman, Glenn Neasham, sentenced to prison for selling an annuity to 83-year-old woman. The woman, according to reports of the trial in the local paper, was diagnosed with dementia several years after she purchased the annuity contract.
According to Ham's article, the annuity actually made money for the policyholder and relatives of the woman were consulted before the deal was done. Yet the State of California deemed the transaction illegal and charges were brought against the agent.