Lowering standards to accommodate broker practices?

The vested interest of the brokerage industry is to avoid real fiduciary standards. They can thereby retain the ability to harvest fees for overpriced, under performing product and sell those products to clients under the safe harbor of the "suitability" standard.

This is the same old story: industry participants collude with legislators to tilt the regulatory table for economic advantage.  We've seen this act before... remember the Savings & Loan Crisis? Fannie & Freddie & the Sub Prime mess? 

We don't know the folks at Fund Democracy, but we think they have it exactly right:

“Our concern has always been that if the SEC were to decide what the fiduciary duty is, it would lower the standard in order to accommodate broker business practices,” said Mercer Bullard, founder and chief executive officer of Fund Democracy LLC, an advocacy group based in Oxford, Mississippi.

source: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aDRJvkh6IQGk