You've heard me make similar complaints before and you're going to here yet another one, again.  When I read this quote from FINRA's report, I can't help but shake my head:


Look -- I get it, truly I do, and I fully concur with any regulatory finding that registered persons solicited investors without having previously performed reasonable due diligence of the product being sold and without undertaking the necessary suitability inquiry for the targeted investor.  If you are a financial services professional being compensated by the investor for recommending a specific investment (and that's the nature of earning commissions), then the least that your client should expect is that you have vetted the investment in general and for your client, specifically.  As such, I appreciate, understand, and applaud any regulator's action against such shortcoming.

But here is what I still don't get.  Given the massive and still accumulating proof that many large FINRA member firms packaged toxic assets into securities and then knowingly sold that crap to unsuspecting consumers, how is it that the little guys -- such as the Thompsons -- are barred or hit with multi-year suspensions, but the big boys are never expelled or suspended from FINRA membership, and, worse, aren't even restricted from opening new branches or new customer accounts? 

What is it that FINRA just doesn't get about this issue?  Or is it that it does "get it," but is satisfied with this double-standard?