Brooks Running is leading the charge against a controversial Olympics rule-Daniel Roberts

On Sunday night at the Rio Olympics, in the 100-meter track final, “The man, the myth, the running legend lived up to his name that we dare not mention.” That’s according to a summary of the action by the @rule40 Twitter account.

The summary is referring to Jamaican runner Usain Bolt, of course. But the account is showing faux deference to Rule 40, the US Olympic Committee’s restrictions against brands that are not official Olympics sponsors. While the account can be humorous, its overall tone is quite serious: non-official sponsors are angry about the rule, and are fighting back.

Who’s behind the account? The Berkshire Hathaway-owned sneaker company Brooks Running, based in Seattle, which sponsors 12 athletes competing at this year’s Olympics. Brooks CEO Jim Weber says Rule 40 must change.

In addition to the @rule40 Twitter handle, Brooks owns the rule40.com domain name, and is using both to wage a PR war against the USOC.

Under Rule 40 guidelines, non-official sponsors cannot refer to the Olympics in any marketing, advertising, or social media during a blackout period that begins nine days before the opening ceremony and ends three days after the closing ceremony. During the blackout, athletes can post about their sponsors if they don’t also mention the Olympics in the same post, a catch that is new this year as part of a change to the rule. (In the past, the athletes couldn’t post about their non-Olympics sponsors at all during the blackout, and non-Olympics sponsors could not post about their Olympic athletes at all during the blackout.)

The rule is unpopular with non-Olympics sponsors and with many athletes, but it is rooted in the USOC’s special heightened trademark protection from Congress. And the USOC argues that it must police social media so vigorously because if it relaxed its rules there would be less value in its official sponsorships, which big consumer brands like Coca-Cola and Panasonic have reportedly spent $200 million on.

It was the Wall Street Journal that first outed Brooks as the company behind the anti-Rule 40 campaign, reporting in July that the domain name was registered to the director of sports marketing at Brooks. Brooks, the WSJ wrote, had gone “undercover.”

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Brooks CEO Jim Weber confirmed the role Brooks has in the anti-Rule 40 campaign, and expanded on it to Yahoo Finance.

“We launched rule40.com to draw attention to the restrictions it places on athletes and their ability to market themselves during the highest profile time of their running careers,” he says.

Brooks is not alone: Oiselle, a women’s athletic apparel brand also based in Seattle (it’s pronounced “wa-ZELL”), has joined in the effort. Its CEO, Sally Bergesen, has been an outspoken opponent of Rule 40, using her Twitter account to criticize and appearing on television. (See above Yahoo Finance video for more.) Bergesen’s hope is to spur change for next time, in 2020—change such as allowing track & field athletes to display the name and logo of a sponsor on their uniform. (They currently cannot, while swimmers and golfers, for example, can, which critics see as arbitrary.)

As the LA Times reported, the rule has led to a lot of snark. For example, Oiselle on its official corporate blog began referring to the Olympics as “the big event in the southern hemisphere.”

The Rule 40 campaign, Weber cautions, is not about Brooks. It is about the athletes. “We wanted to bring forward the facts of the situation that so many athletes find themselves in and present them in a playful, tongue-in-cheek fashion… [and] highlight its negative impact. We hope it’s a good start to a bigger conversation. We believe the rules have to change in order for athletes to benefit from the years they invest in their athletic careers. We think Rule 40 should change.”

Culled from yahoo finance

New retirement rules could save you hundreds of thousands of dollars-Nicole Goodkind

Financial advisors are supposed to look out for your best interests, but up until April, investment pros weren’t held to a “fiduciary standard,” which requires them to put their clients’ interest above everything else. The rule was passed by the Department of Labor and takes effect next year.

“It’s not as if people have been getting bad advice,” says Jean Setzfand, Financial Security VP of AARP. “But there are two different levels of responsibility, the suitability standard and the fiduciary standard.” The suitability standard allows financial advisors to recommend suitable products that match your current risk profile, but they can recommend products that come with higher fees. The fiduciary standard means that advisors need to recommend products in their clients’ best long-term interests, which means products with the lowest fees. Financial advisors who are recommending retirement products will soon be required to meet these higher-level fiduciary standards.

“If I have two products available to me and one is higher-priced and the other one is lower-priced under suitability, the advisor could recommend any product, and for their best interest they’ll recommend the higher because they get a higher commission off of it,” says Setzfand. “Under fiduciary, they have to give me the one that’s lower-cost because that’s in my best interest.”

These fees are typically hidden from consumers and can add up to a significant amount over the course of 30 years, often to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So what can you do to make sure your financial advisor is acting in your best interests? Always ask whether they’re acting as a fiduciary while advising you on your retirement accounts. Don’t worry about offending them either. “If they tell you they’re offended, maybe you should start thinking about another advisor,” says Setzfand.

You should always ask your advisor exactly what you’re paying for. There are several layers of fees within retirement products; make sure you go through each with your advisor. Some common fees to look out for and discuss are plan administration fees, investment fees and individual service fees. 

Culled from yahoo finance

There's finally a tiny bit of good news for the 40 million Americans with student debt

Finally, there's a least a small piece of good news about student debt.

According to the New York Federal Reserve's "Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit," the total student-debt load in America decreased between the first and second quarters of 2016, to $1.259 trillion from $1.261 trillion, a $2 billion decrease.

This decrease in aggregate student-loan debt is the first in this sort of debt since at least the start of 2003, the furthest back the New York Fed's data goes.

Typically, the first and third quarters see the most student-loan-debt growth since those periods include the start of the semester, but despite this trend there had always been, until now, a slight increase between the first and second quarters.

Additionally, student debt is still near historic levels — the number of people with student debt eclipsed 40 million last year, and the year-over-year increase was $97 billion — so it's not as if the ballooning debt load has suddenly turned.

Any decrease in debt loads, however, is good news for the millions of Americans holding these loans, and at the very least the drop is an interesting point to make note of.

(Business Insider/Andy Kiersz, data from NY Fed) 

Culled from Business Insider