Of course you know why, right?
Because yet another monster mogul has raised his hideous head in the I-can-buy-the-presidential-election sweepstakes. His name is Joe Ricketts, and he is the founder of TDAmeritrade. The New York Times, in a terrific display of investigative journalism, got hold of a Ricketts plan for a “super PAC” that created a racist ad against President Obama.
Why are these people so roused to spend millions on disgraceful, ugly lies? If they actually had justifiable criticism to offer, you’d think they’d spend their miserable money on that. But no.
A few years ago, I did some investigating myself and could tell you a lot more about TDAmeritrade and how it takes advantage of people who choose to know nothing about investing and who thus choose to sign up with “independent financial advisers,” who trade through TDAmeritrade and charge you much more money than you should be paying for their “independent advice.” But I won’t.
All I’ll say is, if you use TDAmeritrade for investing … stop. Move everything to another brokerage house (there are many). It’s really easy. Let’s keep our money out of Joe Ricketts pocket because it goes from there into destroying what we think of as our democratic system.