A breeding ground for cons

The government has created a hot little petri dish in which to breed bad business practices, says John Stepek.

Here's the least-astonishing news of the week insurance against identity theft is a complete waste of money. The only surprise is that it's taken this long for regulators to get around to dealing with it.

In November 2007, I wrote a column saying you should save your pennies, as your bank would cover you for any losses. I was rewarded with a rather aggressive email from a claims company, arguing that the piece was irresponsible. (This is how, as a journalist, you know when you're right about something the more defensive the reaction, the less defensible the product.)

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.