After reading the comments section of Ron Lieber's article, I agree with Carl Richards. We have to get out and tell our stories.

The level of hostility toward advisors was shocking. Phrases such as "do it yourself," "don't waste your money," "inherent conflict of interest," "rich elite," "greed," "self-serving," and "financial planning is a joke" are just a few of the choice comments. Out of 52 comments, 75% were negative, 15% were neutral or self-serving, and only 9% were positive. It's a small sample, but is this how most people see our profession?

We can start the story by talking about these points:   More 

We have a problem: People do not trust us!

If you have not read Ron Lieber's article in The New York Times, you should. What you will find is a well-written article discussing some of the more difficult issues that planners faced last year. The answers come from some of the best in the business. It's a nice article asking some tough and thoughtful questions.

But then you read the 50-plus comments: Not a pretty picture.   More 

We can learn lessons from each of our recessions, but the 1990-91 version had some interesting features in common with our latest downturn.

For one thing, the 1990-91 recession followed on the heels of the implosion of the savings and loan industry. A large slice of the U.S. banking industry was emasculated, disrupting the flow of savings into investment. The crisis and its impact on confidence in real estate values and financial investment played an important role in the 1990-91 downturn. We don't have the savings and loan industry today like we had back then, to be sure, but a residential real estate/financing crisis is one of the roots of the 2007-2009 recession, together with a loss of confidence in the banking system and financial markets more generally.     More 

There has been a great deal of discussion, on our blog and more broadly, on the question of which direction the economy, and in turn the markets, will take in the months to come. I seek to highlight a forceful voice of caution here--that of Jeffrey Gundlach, chief investment officer of TCW. Gundlach argues convincingly that we're not out of the woods yet. Indeed, he says, trouble could come sooner rather than later for risk assets. (See also my conversation with Gundlach and Bob Rodriguez earlier this year for Morningstar Advisor magazine.)

In a recent meeting here at Morningstar, he told me that the debt binge that brought the United States to the financial crisis was not created overnight. In fact, he isolated a number of stages to the debt explosion, which began in the early 1980s and by the first quarter of 2009 had left total credit market debt at roughly 375% of gross domestic product, its highest level on record.   More 

Last year, as government firefighters sprayed massive quantities of money at financial institutions threatening the rest of us with calamity, I had a brief talk with my sister Katie. She talked about forestry management, and how forest fires are frequently best left alone, as natural processes promote healthy forests and growth in the long run. They clear out kindling that can lead to the Big One down the road.

In the Financial Times, William White, formerly with the Bank for International Settlements, uses the forestry management example to argue that the successive monetary and fiscal easing after previous financial crises, and the reaction to our latest one, may actually seed bigger future crises.   More