Regarding Tony Romm’s article “Insurance lobbyists block federal crackdown on costly retirement advice,” published on Sunday, August 11, in the Washington Post, for those of us who have even the tiniest understanding of the last fourteen years of the DOL’s ideological crusade to ban consumer access to financial advice, you were probably left wondering where all the context is.

Why is there no mention of the decade of voluminous evidence showing how this rule directly harms consumers and the financial professionals trying to help them (see: New York, the UK, and the US)? Why is there no mention of the independent research from Ernst and Young proving that a holistic financial plan is an essential element to achieving financial security and produces better outcomes for consumers?