At the same time, I think we’re well-served by following the money as it’s an easy way to uncover conflicts of interest (if not all of them).

I once worked for a newsletter where we were forbidden to allow sources to pay for our lunches. The idea was to avoid conflicts of interest in reporting and the rule of course made a certain amount of sense. But it did nothing to address the far bigger conflict problem — that we needed to have relationships with congressional aide to do our jobs and that we all felt pressure to slant our stories a certain way to avoid antagonizing our best sources. A reporter that covers taxes is going to have a hard time meeting deadline on a going forward basis once he writes a story critical of the chairman of the committee. That’s life in the big city.

The same thing applies in InvestoWorld. Scott Burns once told that the reason why the “experts” don’t tell us a lot of the realities of stock investing is that “it is information most people don’t want to hear.” Most “experts” want to get on the good side of the people who buy stocks and who buy investment guides. So they say paint stocks in a more positive light than is merited at times of high valuations. Again, that’s life in the big city.

Conflicts are everywhere. The obvious ones are not such a big deal because we are aware of those and we can adjust in our minds for any slant. It’s the conflicts we don’t think about that cause us the most trouble.

Rob