Obama's first 100 days in office earn advisers' thumbs down

President Obama reached his much-ballyhooed 100-day milestone last week, but most financial advisers were in no mood to celebrate. An exclusive InvestmentNews online survey conducted last week found that a hefty 63.9% of advisers did not approve of his overall performance as president. Only 36.1 % of the 1,010 advisers who responded to the survey thought he was doing a good job. Worse yet, 68.5% said they had either “not too much” or “no” confidence in his ability to fix the ailing economy, while only 31.2% had a “fair” or a “great deal” of faith in his capabilities on that front. The respondents were significantly more critical than those who participated in a similar survey days after his inauguration. On the week of Jan. 26, 36.4% of 1,632 advisers canvassed said they did not have much confidence in the new president’s ability to turn around the financial crisis. In last week’s survey, some advisers said they were staggered by the sheer amount money that was being thrown at the financial crisis. “The degree of spending is so astronomical that he is putting the country in a position of future debt [that we won’t] be able to dig out of it,” said Brian Terry, vice president of investments and operations and chief compliance officer at Financial Management Concepts Inc. of Winter Springs, Fla., which manages $85 million in assets. For the full story, see the upcoming May 4 issue of InvestmentNews.