The Takeaway: Investment Advice Rules Delayed, Diabetes Ups Dementia Risk

Retirement Investing-It's Complicated: Does your retirement investment advisor have your best interests in mind? Possibly not-under current law, many investment consultants and advisors for 401(k) plans and individual retirement accounts are not considered 'fiduciaries,' meaning they're not legally responsible for offering advice solely for the benefit of employers and workers participating in a plan. They could, in fact, be receiving payments from investment companies, recommending investment products from those companies to account holders-and then not be held at all accountable if their advice is faulty.

The Department of Labor has plans to make a much wider swatch of these financial professionals legally responsible for the advice they give; however, the department announced yesterday, it will delay implementing that plan until next year, under pressure from financial services industry lobbyists. In the mean time, it will consider more input and redraft proposed regulations.

Diabetes, Alzheimer's Linked: Japanese researchers are saying people with diabetes are at an increased risk of developing dementia, compared to those without diabetes. Researchers at Kyushu University studied 1,017 people in the 60+ age range for an average of 11 years. Twenty-seven percent of the diabetics developed dementia, compared to 21 percent of non-diabetics. And diabetics were twice as likely to have certain forms of dementia, including vascular dementia, which occurs when blood vessels that provide the brain with oxygen are damaged, and the more severe Alzheimer's disease.

Tuesday Quick Hits: Musician Sting is throwing a major 60th birthday bash ... President Obama backs ending Saturday mail as a part of deficit reduction ... Bill Clinton's annual philanthropic conference, the Clinton Global Initiative, gets underway in New York City this morning ... And the repeal of the ban on gays serving openly in the military took effect at 12:01 a.m. this morning.

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