Susan Collins:A law that makes a fiduciary responsibility

[Uben]

Sen.Collins says she thinks congress should pass a law requiring investment firms to have a fiduciary responsibility to its investors. Of course, if it's a democratic bill she will vote against it...just like she always does. Republilcans are so fucking transparent. They are for a lot of things, just as long as it is a republican idea.
Certainly we need a law like that. I was surprised to find out there was no fiduciary responsibility to their clients already. That basically means they have been using our money for one purpose...to make money for themselves! Would you invest with a firm who had no reason to make you money but instead concentrated on making money for themselves...with your money? That is exactly what they have been doing.
I pulled every dime I had invested with Merrill-Lynch 10 yrs ago for this very reason. They weren't making me shit! Unless you were investing 7 figures, they do nothing for you. I just had a few hundred thousand invested, but I expected to get service and some wise investments. Nada! I do all my own investing these days, and I make a helluva lot more than Merrill-Lynch ever did...mainly by not investing in the stock market!

[secondwind]

1. good for you! I do the same but I invest and don't hold it for long, and I make $$ also.

[customerserviceguy]

2. No matter how many laws we make

to protect stupid people from criminal ones, the criminal ones will always find ways around it. I just hope that enough people see exactly what their friendly broker down the street really does for a living.

Anyone who lets the stockbroker profession tell them what to think deserves the screwing they get from here on in. They're all little Bernie Madoffs in their minds.

[KharmaTrain]

3. Playing Both Sides Of The Fence...

This is especially the case with the "too big to fails"...who have money tied up in many places...in what in essence is a big ponzi scheme. Yep, the big dogs always get the best treatment cause they pay the biggest fees and the highest commissions. The little guy is the fish...be it individually or through a fund, their money is always needed to pay off the bigger players and then if there's anything left it "trickles down".

In a conveluted way these big banks feel they have fulfilled their fiduciary responsibility because their biggest clients did make money. The little guys? Well, let that be a "teaching moment" on market economics.

For years Wall Street and the rushpublicans trumpted the "consumer investor"...that more and more "little guys" were now investing in the market. It sounded great when the market was on the rise and some kind of badge of prosperity...all the while the con game was on as the more money that entered the market, the more was hedged and gambled with.

Now I'd like to know how you invest without having the market affect it? I have investments as well...and as diversified and secured as I can get. In the go-go days, I was constantly pitched on the higher yielding funds that were heavily tied to real estate stocks. If anything, I divested of any of those companies as well as banks I knew were lending credit like there was no tomorrow. No matter how conservative I've been, its still been affected by the fluctuations of the markets. The best one can do is be aware of what they have and who they deal with...and to always know that the house always wins.

[GoCubsGo]

4. Did you see her on the "Toady Show" this morning?

She was obfuscating and lying her ass off about "taxpayer subsidies." Not surprisingly, Mutt Lauer didn't give Sen. Levin a chance to refute her. Hell, he didn't even get much of a chance to say anything. Lauer let Collins blabber and yammer the whole time.

[LiberalFighter]

5. Don't they already have a fidicuary responsibility?

[Uben]

6. No, they don't have any responsibility to make you money

That alone sounds crooked to me. The only incentive they have is their commission, but if they want to use your money on something highly risky in an effort to increase their earnings, they can do as they please.

[Igel]

7. I don't understand how they could.

Take my father's IRA. It was managed for a while. Granted, a stupid idea, but he didn't read the fine print.

They bought and sold stuff based on in-house analysis. When they sold a stock at a loss it was undoubtedly from time to time to somebody with an account with them who had shorted it. Who did they have a fiduciary responsibility to--their client or their client? But, you could argue, the decisions were made in house.

Later my father rescinded any authority they had to buy and sell without express instruction. Yet he bought and sold. If he sold a stock at a loss and it was sold to client of the same firm, is that a violation of fiduciary responsibility? What if he had gone long and bet, so somebody else sold stock that was soon undervalued?

Or does, say, Schwab have to make sure that before allowing one of their customers to short a stock none of their customers are selling at a loss?

Before buying or selling, brokers have what amounts to a blipvert saying that their recommendations are fallible, that the decision is the client's, and the broker cannot be held responsible. It makes sense every time, esp. when you listen to the clients act like their big boys. Until, of course, they screw up, then they're bawling infants.

[rucky]

8. Even if there was a law like that, how could it be enforced?