It is important, moreover, to highlight that these activities are not unregulated – they are supervised, regulated, and examined by the relevant federal and state banking agencies. In the trust and fiduciary area, these protections are enhanced and supplemented by well-developed principles of state and federal trust and fiduciary law that provide customers with strong protections against conflicts of interests and other potential abuses.
I recollect in this context, a comment made by Governor Alan Greenspan who stated that: “It has been my experience that competency in mathematics, both in numerical manipulations and in understanding its conceptual foundations, enhances a person’s ability to handle the more ambiguous and qualitative relationships that dominate our day-today financial decision making”2.