My point was that an implicit "you shoulda known better than to trust us" might save [their] butt, but only at the cost of its longer-term credibility - ditto for the rest of 'em...
I'm not suggesting that the answer is "you shoulda known better than to trust us," but a far less cheeky, "you should take responsibility for your actions" in the spirit of the oft-quoted-yet-rarely-heeded caveat emptor.
It is now, and always has been, naive for anyone, anywhere, to believe that free, widely disseminated advice is offered selflessly and with the individual's best interest in mind.
As for the "credibility" of Wall Street firms...which I believe in this case is synonymous with altruism, hell - why would anyone have ever considered them as having any more than any other business? Is it, as I suspect, the continuing confusion of their activities as a service, as opposed to a business?
I can't think it will do much for a libertarian approach to economics and politics if "this time" leads to a regime of regulation as sweeping as instituted the last time(s)...
You're absolutely right (which doesn't surprise me). All I can say is that each reactive, kneejerking, sweeping round of regulation brings ever closer some real world version of reductio ad absurdum, at which point the failure of that approach will be so apparent as to be obvious to even the most ardent paternalists.
What will the regulation arising of this case dictate? That security analysts smile - under penalty of fine - whilst writing their reports? That they use only "nice" terms when conversations inevitably sway towards their topic of analysis?
How much responsibility can be legislated or ruled away before the cost of risk mitigation brings the whole teetering structure collapsing down upon itself? I don't want to find out.
Obviously, most people would not consider a bit of dissembling on the part of a salesman to be "fraud," but a) most people will also recognize a difference between fudging on some aesthetic issue and lying about MPG, re-sale value, or crash test results,
I certainly think that there's a difference between the two, and I equate what analysts do - to the extent that the information is available for one to do their own research and such that one takes responsibility for their own decisions - to an aesthetic issue. Lying about MPG or crash test results is akin, as I see it, to the penny stock executives and promoters who completely, and entirely, fabricate information. That's fraud, and should be dealt with far more harshly than it is, IMO.
and, b) having the public view brokerages as being on the level of used car salesmen, or lower, can't be a positive for the industry and for what it represents.
It shouldn't be a positive or a negative. Perhaps it is because inevitably someone is on one side, and someone is on the other. As I see it, it's just a fact of life: no business is out there to give anything away for free or to subsidize your learning curve. They're out to get you to make a transaction, and the name of the game - whether in brokerage, in getting a haircut, in buying a car, getting a burger and fries or in gambling in Lost Beggas - is to get as much as they can while spending as little of theirs as possible to get it.
[D]o you extend your free speech views to all regulation of false advertising, all fraud and racketeering laws, all shouting of fire in crowded buildings, etc.?
When it comes to false advertising, as I see it, being truly "false" has to be verifiable. If you tell me that a dieting product "works"...and it actually worked on only one out of 100 people...well, that's not false advertising. It is incumbent upon me to get the additional information or, with the small amount of information I have, to opt to move forward or stand pat. If it is said that the product cures cancer, and it doesn't - that's blatantly false and should be actionable. That's where I stand.
With regard to analysts saying "buy," citing reasons (however untenable or absurd as most of them were, such as suggesting that business may suddenly pick up tenfold or that the capital markets will stay open to further fund raising indefinitely), that to me would be entirely legitimate, as would sending emails stating the exact opposite internally. (As for racketeering, I'd need some specific examples to cite where exactly I stand.)
I understand that for most people, the suggestion of ultimate, personal responsibility for ones' actions is an impossibly tough pill to swallow in a hilariously - and perhaps tragically - litigious society.
Don't get me wrong: I do think many of the practices described are crappy. But I think a lot of practices and conventions in business and society are lousy and yet wouldn't dare try, let alone suggest, legislating them away. In this specific case, where personal emails are involved, that would involve regulatory tentacles groping within the realm of personal opinions, communications, and sales practices to the extent that they intersect with the aforementioned.
You may, for all I know, but the public and its representatives are much less extreme and consistent, especially in the aftermath of having their collective pocket picked.
As I see it, they picked their own pockets. By assuming that some character on TV or quotes in a blurb on a financial news website was giving away information out of some inexplicable but apparently entirely believable benevolence, they cast aside their better judgement.
How many of those people, when the time comes and opportunity...or "opportunity"...again beckons with its' Siren call, will again succumb to that lapse?
Few? Some? Most? |
