The recent Supreme Court decision that reversed the 40-year precedent known as the Chevron deference was greeted by cheers from the right and angst from the left. Those who approved are celebrating what they see as the reining in of an out-of-control regulatory state, and those who disapproved are describing the decision as the court substituting its judgment for those of genuine “experts.”
The Chevron case had established that when the intent of Congress in any particular piece of legislation was unclear or open to interpretation that the courts should defer to the expertise of the relevant government agency or department.
This writer has had a longstanding skepticism of people described as experts, and an old definition comes to mind — Expert: “X” is the unknown, and a spurt is a drip under pressure.
While a person may have expertise in a given field, that does not mean that the same person is immune from bias or ideological motivation. The Supreme Court case in question involved a unit of the Commerce Department ordering fishermen to not only have a federal overseer on board their boats, but also to pay that person’s salary and other costs.
Now, what exactly was the scientific expertise required to issue that regulation? That is just one example of the power of government regulators to issue edicts that may or may not have anything to do with scientific expertise. Of course, one could just as easily produce examples where judges would have little to offer in cases where genuine expertise was required, and so the two will remain in tension.
Part of my problem with experts comes from my 46-plus years of experience in the insurance and financial services industry, which has been my other passion along with my study and teaching of economics and political science. Despite those many years, I would never presume to describe myself as a financial expert. In fact, there is no such thing. I am unaware of any accredited institution that grants a pedigree called financial expert. One can become a CFP (certified financial planner) or my own designation of ChFC (chartered financial consultant), but neither designation turns a person into a “financial expert.”
Unfortunately for the consuming public, there are a significant number of people who do bill themselves as financial experts, and as such feel free to render advice, usually on radio shows or in books, across a wide range of financial disciplines. In every case with which I am familiar, the alleged expert renders generic advice that is generally sound and often very helpful. That changes for the worse when they get into specifics. For just one example, it is helpful to encourage people with dependents to acquire life insurance. It may also be helpful to suggest a methodology for determining how much to carry. But to go beyond that and recommend that only one specific type of life insurance should be bought is about as absurd as a family physician having a prescription pad in his or her desk and on every sheet the word “penicillin” is preprinted. One size fits all.
From 1997-2005 I taught an 18-week course titled “Life Insurance” to actuarial science majors at Penn State University. The textbook was about 800 pages long, just in case you thought life insurance was simple. Despite that, I have encountered multiple financial “experts” who recommend that everyone should purchase nothing but 20-or 30-year term life insurance, invest all the money you can in the stock market, and then by the time the term insurance expires you will be so rich you won’t need life insurance. Well, nobody ever went broke in this country selling prescriptions for wishful thinking.
Long experience in the real world has taught me that there is (1) no such thing as a best type of life insurance, (2) no such thing as a best type of investment, and (3) no such thing as a best financial plan. Only individualized prescriptions are acceptable, and those have to be based on a lengthy fact-finding process to include not only facts and figures but also such things as one’s track record of financial discipline, their values and other intangibles that make a mockery of overly generic advice.
Family physicians do not pretend to have all the answers. That’s why they refer us to specialists if necessary. Not every attorney will render complex advice in estate planning. Genuine professionals know their limitations and don’t pretend to know it all. They also commit to continuing education, they diagnose before they prescribe, and above all they never render advice beyond their level of competence. The nation’s self-promoting “financial experts” should confine themselves to what they do best, which is to render sound generic advice and encouragement but avoid straying into specifics in areas in which they are neither qualified, licensed nor regulated.
Joseph Filko has taught economics and American government, and lives in Williamsburg. He can be reached at jfilko1944@gmail.com.
