It sure is a familiar pattern we see at Morgan Stanley, to anyone who has read the book. What boggles the mind is the kind of "stealing" that goes on that never gets reported. Karma, baby, karma. Keep it as clean as you can, I say.
Whether MS is Harvard or not I am not sure; he mentions that Harvard was like a lot of the others. I tried to find the quote where he compares Harvard to Merril Lynch et al. By process of elimination you can determine who it is not. Here's an appropriate quote for today, regarding the Morgan Stanley news: "Clients should not believe that they can trust their brokers just because they are with investment houses that have network tv commercials. Some of the biggest names on Wall Street, among them Merril Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Salomon Smith Barney, Paine Webber, and J.P.Morgan, were among the firms paying tens of millions in fines in 1999 for alleged share price-fixing and stock manipulation that cheated clients out of several billion dollars. Dozens of brokers were suspended, but only temporarily. Some were back at work within three weeks." License To Steal, p.22.
Seems to me we should more documentation about such events. A record of fines going back several years should be a great way to underscore the reality. Maybe ETrade should have commercials that say "In 1999 such-and-such a broker paid out 3.6 million in fines for allegedly cheating their clients; are you really sure you want to give these guys your retirement funds?" What is it called, changing the rules of engagement? Haha! ETrade has site outages but does not deliberately rip off it's cutomers. And no doubt ETrade is prepared to answer any questions along those lines, regarding point spreads et al. These "old boys" are unbelievable. Fly an eagle, folks, fly like an eagle. |
