For years, self-regulatory agencies (like FINRA or the Exchanges) have wielded the statutory authority granted them by Congress - and backed by the SEC - exercising governmental power to compel testimony, impose fines and punishments, and even bar a person or firm from an entire industry.
At the same time, they declaim that they're just membership organizations, so don't owe anyone Constitutional protections (like Fifth Amendment Due Process) and aren't subject to Equal Access to Justice Act claims for your litigation expenses when they lose.
So SROs essentially are the ...
Last week, industry groups filed two suits seeking to block the Labor Department's new fiduciary rule governing IRA and other retirement-fund investment recommendations.
In the first, the U.S. and several local Texas Chambers of Commerce and the Securities & Financial Markets Association filed suit in Dallas (in the conservative Fifth Circuit). The suit calls the rule-making a usurpation of SEC authority (and Dodd-Frank's specific authorization of the SEC to promulgate uniform fiduciary standard) that deliberately adopts an unworkable rule, then conditions exemptions from ...
Congress voted this week to de-rail the Department of Labor's sweeping fiduciary-duty suite of rule-making, but doesn't have the votes to override the President's threatened veto. The Rule (over a 1,000 pages in all) imposes a sweeping definition of who owes fiduciary duties to retirement investors in retail IRA, HSA, Roth, Coverdell and other "qualified money" situations and prohibits conflicted transactions (including differential compensation), unless they comply with a series of exceptions, carve-outs and exemptions. Industry groups say the compliance and paperwork ...