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March 19, 2012 at 09:32 AM
Elliot Weissbluth’s two-and-a-half minute whiteboard animation video recently posted on YouTube calling brokers “butchers” and fiduciaries “dietitians” is drawing quite a bit of attention—particularly since it was produced only days after a Goldman Sachs’ employee publicly resigned from the firm.
Just a day after telling AdvisorOne that Goldman Sachs’ management puts profits before clients, Weissbluth, CEO of HighTower Advisors, says in the March 16 video posted on HighTower’s YouTube page, that the distinction between a broker and a fiduciary advisor can best be summed up this way: “Brokers are butchers selling products; fiduciaries are dietitians looking after your health. The problem is that most people think that their butcher is a dietitian.”
Weissbluth says in the video that the “old school butcher” would never tell a client that eating too much meat is bad for their cholesterol level, and instead refer the client to “the fish monger down the street.”
Whereas a fiduciary advisor, he says, is akin to a dietitian in that the dietitian will “run all of her analysis and give me her best thinking of what is best for me.”
Naturally, comments on Weissbluth’s video vary from: “Pretty much sums it up…we are literally lambs being led to slaughter,” to just plain “stupid.”
