August 6, 2007 - Remember that guy named "Prince" who had to quit using his own name because of some lousy contract with a record company? So he started calling himself "The Artist Formerly Known As Prince" and put out some more records? Well, the "NASD" is now "FINRA" (I'll let you go to the website to find out what it means... I don't want to take the time to type it out.  The same goes for "NASD").

I'm going to call them "FINRA, the self-regulatory agency formerly known as the NASD." I guess they're doing the "rebranding" thing  (I wonder how much they paid the consultants to come up with the new name?).  They went looking around for some fines to toss out under their brand new name and Morgan Stanley was the lottery winner. And this is one of those "newsgrabbers" that the big boys submit to periodically in order for the regulators to be able to show they were doing something.

In this case, the ONLY reason Morgan Stanley "got caught" was because the garbage they were shoving down the proverbial throat of small investors stunk so bad that it decomposed too fast and some people complained.

What that means is a whole heck of alot of similar garbage just gets buried and they get to keep the ill-gotten gains on those deals. So, what the heck, we'll pay back a few million on this deal and keep the few million on the other 20 deals we DIDN'T get caught on!

And they'll buy lunch for a few Senators and maybe throw in a few exotic trips with all the trimmings... and then it's business  (and millions in ill-gotten profits)  as usual.

Click the title to read the original article. It will open in a new window.