With The Latest, Very Alarming, Wealth Inequality Statistics As Our Motivation, Today I Would Like To Introduce A New Community I’m Working On Called “dFused”. dFused Will Be A New Global Financial Community Open To Every Citizen Wanting A Safe & Trusted Partner To Assist In The Creation, Growth and Protection Of Savings And Wealth. This New Global Community Will Provide All Individuals Unbiased Access To The World’s Leading Financial Professionals While Enabling All Community Members To Play An Integral Role In Designing A Financial System That Can Be Trusted To Serve Society Through The Largest Public Application Of Fiduciary Capitalism. Solving Wealth Inequality Is Much More Than Just A Motivation, It Is Our Primary Mission.

I know that was a mouthful but please bear with me. Wealth Inequality is clearly a very complex issue with many facets having origins residing outside of the global financial system. However, I do believe the incessant lack of mobility within or between socioeconomic tiers is partly the result of a global financial system that offers unique experiences, products and services based on social stratification principles, which were an unintended consequence of two highly correlated but separate forces. The first of which involves the very laws and regulations introduced by governments to protect “retail investors” as these laws create barriers to entry because they either 1) lock out retail investors entirely by applying outdated wealth and income qualifiers that create a generic baseline for who has unrestricted access, or not, to certain services and products or 2) because these laws force the financial industry to provide significantly more oversight driving up operational costs and risk exposure limiting the availability of affordable products and services. This latter point leads to the other cause of social strata based servicing, which involves the financial industry needing to comply with these rules while still attempting to remain profitable. This issue is very important as many of these laws and regulations forces the financial industry to take on significantly more legal and compliance risks when servicing retail investors, which unnecessarily drives up operational costs ultimately causing inflated fees to retail investors for these services often resulting in many firms to avoid retail investors altogether. Compounding this issue are rules that determine the type and level of compensation the financial industry can charge clients for certain services whether it be a commissions or fee. Commissions are often only allowed for certain one-time services such as “brokerage” and other single-event transactions where the size of each commission is often capped or limited by regulation or law. Financial advice, planning and management, however, is often restricted to fee-based service models where the decision to provide services to an individual is driven predominantly by the size of her investment portfolio and/or income, as fee levels are based on a percentage of overall assets, resulting in those with fewer assets to be excluded as the fees generated would not be enough to cover a financial firm’s costs.

These seemingly very trivial issues, however, need to be better understood by broader society as they are part of the drivers behind a 2 to 3 decades old global movement by corporations, financial firms, legislators and governments to force the widespread adoption of “self-directed” models where ill-equipped citizens are given full autonomy to manage ALL their finances, retirement assets and now even their health and medical benefits with little or no access to professional guidance. To introduce a “self-directed” model such as this without adequate protections in place to ensure every citizen has access to the proper knowledge, skills and experience to take on such an important role is not only blatantly negligent but disastrous to both current and future generations as well. Without assistance, I fear the broader public, including both the 92% without sufficient wealth and those in the top 8% without enough assets to warrant assistance from a financial professional, will continue to be exploited and exposed to unnecessary financial risks and harm in endless global boom-and-bust cycles that will continue to wipe out wealth and retirement assets in the blink of an eye.

I understand these issues may seem trivial to most of us but they are actually some of the many fundamental reasons why we have a broken system. As such, it would not be baseless to conclude that the current social strata system actually operates in a counterintuitive fashion where those without wealth needing the most assistance receive little to no support while those with wealth are overloaded with offers of support and attention. This conclusion, in fact, can be supported by the historical patterns associated with global wealth data where we have seen very little, if any, upward movement of wealth across social strata, especially amongst the bottom 92% of global citizens. In fact, we only need to look at the period from mid-2009 to mid-2015 to find very powerful proof that something is amiss as over this same period where global markets rose in excess of +150%, the top 8% of the adult population grew wealth by $57.2 trillion while the bottom 92% of us actually LOST ($1.6 trillion) in wealth. Unfortunately, this is exactly what we should expect when we operate a social strata based financial system where governments, corporations and the financial industry knowingly establish a structure that forces ordinary citizens to manage all of their financial assets with little knowledge to do so successfully while having very little or absolutely no access to appropriately skilled financial professionals.

For these reasons, I believe it is absolutely critical that society participate in shaping a new system. However, the approach should not be to simply look to governments and industry to fix these problems by introducing new laws, regulations or additional intermediaries where decisions are made behind closed doors with little transparency but rather by society directly participating in discussions to better shape outcomes. Although there are numerous approaches one can take to participate in the discussion, I believe a very effective and powerful model can be found by simply looking at the “Institutional Investor” group, which is an investor class consisting of institutional asset owners such as the intermediaries who operate and offer investment funds to the public or companies as part of their retirement plans. This class of investor has been shaping behavior in our global corporations and capital markets behind the scenes for decades with very little awareness by the general public. Examples of such important behavioral shaping include early movements by socially responsible investors to effect change by demanding Institutional Investors not invest in companies whose activities were not aligned with the investors social beliefs or considered bad for society. Some of these earlier efforts included important successful global efforts by Institutional Investors where they pulled money, or divested, from companies with operations or products not considered socially responsible such as 1) companies operating in South Africa in an effort to end apartheid, 2) companies operating in developing countries where treatment of workers by corporations involved unfair practices including unlimited hours, little or no wages or benefits and child or slave labor in an effort to improve worker safety, income levels and protect citizens, and 3) corporations offering products or services deemed unhealthy or unsafe including tobacco, weapons, alcohol and gambling in an effort to improve overall public safety, health and well-being.

Clearly the role of institutional investor intermediaries can affect a lot of positive change and designing a new financial system that serves the needs of society can and should be one of them, especially as we consider the dominant force they are in today’s global financial system. However, this dominance and exclusivity, as it is currently modeled, should concern us all as the voice of society should not be delivered through a few dominant players who fail to understand the needs and desires of the 92% because they simply do not allow us a seat at the table. As someone who has worked in the global financial industry for almost 30 years, I can tell you with absolute certainty that these intermediaries have more power and influence than any other industry group. What society fails to understand, however, is that we grant this power and influence when we hire these intermediaries to act as agents of us, their principals, each and every time we invest in any fund. Think of it like this, if you have a 401k, IRA or other investment account, the funds you choose to invest in creates a legal relationship involving a principal (you) and an agent (the fund), where you in most cases have “unknowingly” given them authority to make decisions on your behalf, such as when and what types of assets to buy and sell or making voting decisions as part of shareholder meetings on corporate matters involving company stock held by the fund and owned by you. Thus, you’ve entrusted this very powerful and influential role and responsibility to an institution or company who knows absolutely nothing about your social beliefs and votes on socially important matters entirely based on needs and desires defined by them. If we return to the earlier discussion about “behavioral shaping”, I would conclude that if we really want the financial system to serve “society” and work for each and every one of us fairly then we should find a way to take back this power and play a role in transforming our markets.

With all of the above and history as my guide, I believe the best way to change the structure of the current global financial system, and end boom-and-bust-cycles, is to not rely on conflicted industry insiders, lawmakers and regulators but rather shape and drive change through a social movement empowered by fiduciary capitalism. Such a movement would enable ordinary citizens to play an integral role in shaping a global system that serves society according the needs of all humans rather than the needs of global corporations and a few million people who hold much of the world’s wealth. This fiduciary based system will replace an outdated and disastrous model that often exploits its citizens in the never ending pursuit by global business for increased earnings or yield at the peril of the most exposed individuals in our society, who are those without wealth having little to no retirement nest-eggs to depend on.

In order to deliver a “fiduciary based system”, dFused will develop and launch 3 separate initiatives called “Citizen Fusion”, “Smart Clusters” and “Smart Markets”. Our Citizen Fusion initiative will utilize Blockchain and decentralized ledger technology, and concepts, to build a global community of citizens forming the largest socially responsible institutional asset owner. The primary purpose of this community will not be to disrupt the financial industry, as it consists of many of the skilled professionals we need, but instead correct imbalances by allocating responsibilities according to one’s role and area of expertise. I do not believe we ever intended to create a financial system that involved the financial industry taking on the role of the voice-of-society, as it has, but rather as something that “serves” it. For this reason, we will reallocate responsibilities through our second initiative, Smart Clusters based on professional expertise where investment managers are only expected to manage portfolios and investments, brokers are only expected to execute transactions, wealth planners only plan, investment advisors only advise and bankers only bank. This will be a role based, not a firm based allocation.

Our last initiative, Smart Markets, will also utilize Blockchain technology to deliver the financial industry with critical “universal” solutions that will resolve the numerous legal, compliance and operational risks that have plagued it for years including unified solutions to AML, KYC, CIP including Customer Suitability, Customer Contracts & Agreements, Tax Reporting, and many more. These solutions will involve mostly private and consortium type Blockchain’s to minimize industry risks and compliance, unless transparency is warranted and necessary to ensure our community members remained informed.

Unlike most critics, I do not lay blame on any one group for this broken financial system as I believe financial industry players, regulators and legislators all want properly functioning markets. I do believe, however, that the structure of the global capital markets in place today is simply the result of a culture where introduced changes and solutions lacked accurate in-depth analysis and research, involved little, if any, real collaboration and were typically a response to a large problem requiring a swift and rushed response. Whatever side of the debate you’ve chosen, whether be it a decentralized purist wanting true P2P markets, a global financial firm seeking operational improvements and risk reductions or simply someone in between, we believe your efforts are noble but ask that you first consider what dFused has to offer. We’ve found a win-win solution but you will only see it if you remain open-minded and willing to fight the fight against global inequalities.

Fusing global citizens and creating smart clusters and markets are just the first in a series of many complex, but established, universally compliant solutions we will introduce in our attempt to deliver a new financial system that serves society. We are firmly committed to helping society protect and build savings and wealth while also delivering global financial institutions an environment that consists of significantly less risk exposure with the potential to recognize $100’s of millions in cost savings. dFused will not repeat the mistakes of the past as we believe true change is absolutely critical to every global citizen in order to ensure a prosper life for us, our children and the many generations that follow.

Our concepts and strategies are defined and our regulated/registered entity is approved and ready to go but we have much more to do including building the team and platform so we ask that you follow our progress, reach out to see how you can get involved and rally behind us to ensure we make this a reality. The problem is quite complex but the solution is equally simple. If you are someone looking to become part of the team all we ask is that you share our vision and are a leading professional in your field with proof-of-work that supports your high-flying skills as we have lots to do with little time to waste. If you are an existing financial firm willing to hear us out and seek a better less complex way forward for your industry that can deliver results to your bottom line, let’s talk. If you’re a socially driven person or enterprise wanting to understand more, our doors are always open.

I’ve bootstrapped this initiative from the beginning and will continue to push the movement forward until the till runs empty, the problem is solved or they cart me away in a box. I have the support of my family and friends, and they have my commitment that I will do everything humanly possible to shape a better way forward for all our children and future generations.

Let’s continue the dialogue, collaborate as a society and share these goals to ensure the future is bright for generations to come.