In reality this cynically labeled “best interest” standard is a craven giveaway to Wall Street.
Instead of strengthening protections for investors, is a craven giveaway to Wall Street. Instead of strengthening protections for investors, it will preserve and protect broker-dealers’ ability to rip off their clients, water down the standard that applies to investment advisers, and abandon investors to sort out the differences between brokers and advisers based on confusing and misleading disclosures.
That’s why the chief supporters of this rulemaking are not the investors who want and need to be protected against conflicted investment advice, or state securities regulators who are the front line on retail investor protections, or fiduciary advisers who have long embraced a higher standard, but the broker-dealers that make tens of billions of dollars annually steering investors into high-cost, risky investments that are highly profitable for the firm, rather than those that are best for the investor.