That would sure put a lot of brokers out of the business.  Could be even more lucrative for the survivors.  Of course the small investor would be the one hurt in all of this since no one would call on them.

I doubt that will happen - the FSA, let alone Europe, don’t know sh*t about investments.  It’s painfully obvious that fee based or fee only is not always in the client’s best interest, ie., paying an annual fee on a SMA bond portfolio versus paying commissions on that same portfolio.

This may sound stupid, but how the hell would any municipality raise any cash in that kind of setup? Don’t you need individual investors that buy individual investments (i.e. stocks, bonds, etc) to continue to purchase them? It seems to me that those places can’t just rely on hedge funds, mutual funds, and pensions to buy those issues…