TIAA-CREF, which cares for close to a trillion dollars in assets, has been in the news lately for using abusive sales practices. When training their employees, their motto supposedly was: “If they cry, they buy.” This means that if they can scare a consumer about the future of her finances, there’s a good chance they can convince her to buy whatever product they’re selling. Employees at CREF do have incentives, like bonuses, to sell higher-priced funds. And when clients have no knowledge of those kinds of incentives, this leads to abusive practices in the financial industry.