Sense on Cents

A report released yesterday by MarketWatch highlights the fact that the Wall Street self-regulator FINRA is launching a new initiative to target fraud within its purview of the financial industry. This initiative, designated the Office of Fraud Detection and Market Intelligence, will be headed by a longstanding FINRA employee, Cameron Funkhouser. Let’s navigate and offer insightful critique and analysis.

From the MarketWatch report entitled, Wall Street Watchdog Promises to Show More Teeth:

Wall Street’s self-regulatory body that self-admittedly failed to detect 2008’s major financial scandals has a plan to not miss the next one. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority is touting its new fraud team as the key to spotting another Bernard Madoff.

“I’ve been encouraged to pursue anybody who’s engaged in fraud, with unfettered access to sources with industry connections,” Funkhouser said.

Would Mr.Funkhouser agree to inspect and pursue potential fraud within his own organization’s portfolio management group? I am referring specifically to FINRA’s ‘timely’ liquidation of its $647 million auction-rate securities position in 2007. Will Funkhouser agree to release all pertinent details of that liquidation so the public can determine if FINRA utilized material, non-public information for its own benefit and at the expense of the thousands of ARS investors who continue to be unable to access their $150 billion?

In the spirit of full disclosure, the reporter of the MarketWatch story contacted me for information while he was writing the article. I spoke to him for an hour, highlighting a number of issues within FINRA. I am extremely disappointed the reporter and/or the editors of MarketWatch chose not to highlight FINRA’s ARS liquidation. In my opinion, whoever decided to hold that topic out of this article did ARS investors and all investors an enormous disservice.

MarketWatch does provide some sense of balance to its reporting in highlighting that:

But at a time when the whole of the financial services industry is being questioned, from practitioners to regulators, FINRA has not been immune to the ire.

The Project on Government Oversight – a private non-profit group whose mission is to expose corruption in private business and federal government — harshly criticized FINRA in a seething February letter to Congress and subsequent blog posts for its failure to prevent and detect fraudulent activity and has urged action to fix or overhaul FINRA.

FINRA said POGO’s letter had “numerous inaccuracies and misperceptions” and said that the two organizations had never spoken.

Numerous inaccuracies? Like what? FINRA needs to realize it owes American investors total accountability and transparency if it wants to be viewed as a credible regulator. If there are inaccuracies, then FINRA should have the depth of character to address them one by one. In terms of not speaking to POGO, I have written most of what POGO reported. I requested more than once to speak to FINRA representatives. They refused to speak to me each and every time.

MarketWatch continues:

Sweeping financial regulatory reform legislation currently working its way through Capitol Hill addresses the issue of self-regulatory bodies like FINRA.

The House’s plan for financial reform passed in December and requires the SEC to evaluate the effectiveness of self-regulatory bodies.

In regard to the proposed financial regulatory reform in front of Congress currently, I highlighted for this reporter the fact that FINRA barely receives mention in the comprehensive legislation. The fact that Congress can propose Financial Regulatory Reform without serious attention paid to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority is a virtual fraud unto itself. In my opinion, that reality is hard evidence of the power of the Wall Street lobby.

This article is the third time The Wall Street Journal or an affiliate has whiffed in terms of truly challenging FINRA on its ownership and liquidation of auction-rate securities. While FINRA, much like the SEC, would like to utilize the Mark McGwire (“I’m not here to talk about the past”) approach, America is wise to the fact that FINRA needs to fully address, expose, and clean up its past before it can begin to think it will be viewed as a credible regulator moving forward. If you do not believe me on this point, just look at all the ROTFLMAO-type comments left on the MarketWatch article.

If any FINRA reps read my blog (and I know you do!!), I repeat my open invitation to join me on No Quarter Radio’s Sense on Cents with Larry Doyle any Sunday evening.

LD

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This entry was posted on Friday, April 16th, 2010 at 10:14 AM and is filed under FINRA, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.