Why oh why oh why do people still let themselves get fleeced by banks, unit trusts and pension funds?

Here is a selection of quotes by more intelligent people than myself which I’ve used in PILLAGED

Financial journalists “Personal finance is corrupt..Financial institutions and PR companies target millions of pounds from marketing budgets at a few dozen business journalists..Some journalists boast of lifestyles that are little more than perpetual junkets”

Unit trusts “Investors have become victims as the charges they have to pay have risen and risen while the returns they get have been consistently below par and the actual cost of managing their money has fallen”

Unit trusts which invest in other unit trusts: “Probably one of the biggest scams I have witnessed in my lifetime is the concept of fund of funds”

Investment managers “Within the City you find many who are greedy and talented, many who are greedy but untalented, but few who are talented but not greedy”

Regulators “At a time when millions of people have lost their jobs, generally by no fault of their own, protecting the jobs of failed bank regulators only adds insult to injury”

Banks and accountants “All distressed banks received a clean bill of health from their auditors and within days some were asking the Government to bail them out”

Financial advisers “It’s just 99% of financial advisers who give the rest of us a bad name”

New savings products “Most so-called financial innovations are just new ways to fleece customers or hide risk” 

ISAs “Cash ISAs have been turned into a systematic swindle. Sniffing an easy profit banks and building societies have, from day one, undermined and perverted what should have been a clean and simple product”

Spread betting “The spread betting leverage means that you can get rich, which is a wonderfully appealing idea. But it also means you can get poor, which most people ignore”

Equity release “The only winners in equity release are the companies and elderly people who die just a few years after taking out the policy”

Financial services “Taxpayers must protect themselves against two things: the corrupting influence of bureaucratic self-interest amongst regulators and the political clout wielded by the large institutions they are supposed to police”

Financial ignorance “It is hard to overestimate the extent of financial illiteracy amongst some consumers…Many pension policy holders did not realise their money was invested in the stock market”