People love to hate Wall Street. They often become so enamored with the oddity that is wealth-on-parade. For all of those who believe the securities industry is just a bunch of rich kids running amok on Wall Street, you should probably think twice.

Imagine walking in to any given store – Wal-Mart or Walley’s tackle shop, it doesn’t matter. In this store, every price tag is the size of a small billboard. On this billboard, you see a full product liability disclaimer, suitability disclaimer, the commission charged, the retail price charged to the consumer, and an advisory notice stating that you might be able to purchase the goods somewhere else cheaper. On top of this, you need to sign a multi-page document in order to open an account with the shop.  Sound fun? It gets worse.

Say Walley, the tackle shop owner, is out on the Internet posting at his favorite fishing forums. He wants to talk about his favorite fishing lure. But because Walley is in the tackle business, he must disclose that he is in the business of selling tackle. However Walley, being in the business of selling tackle must submit all of his forum posts to his compliance department to ensure that everything meets the business regulations on advertisements. Yes, regardless of whether the conversation is formal or informal, it is still considered an advertisement. When compliance checks off on his text, he may then submit it to the forum with the appropriate disclaimer attached.

Now this frustrates Wally. So he gives up posting on the Internet. His employees, however, continue to post on the Internet in forums or wherever they like. So Wally decides to make the prpcess easier on his business and compliance team. The employees can have a website so long as they do not disclose their job or employer. Employees can use social networking only if they do not mention their job or employer. If they do mention their job or employer, they must immediately remove any such reference or potentially face a fine levied by Wally and the Tackle Industry Regulators for posting un-reviewed advertising.

In fact, the advertising rules are so restrictive for the Tackle industry, Wally can provide very little information to consumers through marketing pieces. Every piece of literature is scrutinized to the point that the only thing a marketing piece can do is talk in extremely vague language about completely ambiguous topics that kind of give someone an idea about a specific product but not enough for them to really determine whether they need it or want it or could even use it for themselves.

Now this isn’t always the Tackle Industry’s fault. A lot of the problems stem directly from the litigious society we live in where buyers must be assumed to be stupid, inept, or completely retarded. Does this sound mean? Sure.

But the securities industry is this way. Insurance runs the same gamut of stupid regulation as well. Dateline did a series on Equity Indexed Annuities a while back where one insurance training company was telling insurance agents to treat potential clients like children (12 year olds if I remember correctly). Imagine how horrible that sounded coming out of the trainer’s mouth. Would you want to be treated like a 12 year old? I sure wouldn’t want to be treated that way. But the regulatory environment for marketing materials reinforces this type of training.

As an aside, I do not agree with all of the training issues brought up – exploiting fear to make a quick buck is a wretched way of doing business. I only object to the characterization that treating customers like 12 year olds is somehow bad when the entire industry and regulatory structure reinforces this behavior after fighting countless lawsuits.

It’s a vicious circle.