Lost and 'Pound'

Very positive review in tomorrow's NYT business section of brand new book, Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry,  by Helene Olen, a terrific blogger over at the Forbes site, a book more for the masses than the finance wonks.  As Caitiin Kelly writes, "It’s a take-no-prisoners examination of the ways she says we have been scared, misled or bamboozled by those purporting to help us achieve financial security."

What most advice fails to factor in — and what we often choose to overlook ourselves — are the costly realities of things like job loss, protracted unemployment, medical bankruptcy and high-interest debt. Even when we do save, plummeting interest rates, falling home prices and other economic events imperil our best efforts. 

And there's this:

One woman who comes in for some scathing treatment is the best-selling financial adviser Suze Orman, whom Ms. Olen criticizes as offering “financial platitudes” and making huge amounts of money by telling others to be frugal. Ms. Olen writes that “Orman’s supposed wisdom often contradicts itself,” and that her affiliations with companies like FICO and Lending Tree raise questions about the impartiality of her advice.