Financial advisory professionals now can use social networking to expand their businesses while still being in compliance with the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934.

The new site, http://www.linkedfa.com/ provides free membership to advisors and their clients. The privately owned Coral Springs, FL based allows financial advisors to retrieve records of communications between an advisor and a client, blog posts, comments and instant messages, along with shared documents and other public or private correspondence.

The site offers privacy settings that allow advisors to have one-on-one conversations with clients, which are logged as well. In addition, compliance officers who join the network can monitor client-advisor correspondence by setting keyword alerts.  Read more...

Well, why should I be surprised? Have heard and seen it all now.

On Friday, June 5, Reuters’ Bangalore reporter Ajay Kamalakaran, reported that the FDIC was looking to replace Citigroup’s CEO Pandit with former U.S. Bancorp Chief Exec Grundhofer, who recently joined Citigroup’s board.

Reason being, of course that the FDIC was concerned about lack of senior executive experience in commercial banking at Citi. It’s just confirmation, that as feared by those wirehouses holding TARP monies, more government regulation.

Obviously this is just the beginning as we see today with the pending legislation to allow the SEC to restrict compensation at companies receiving TARP dollars.  Read more...

Bank of America, a recipient, of $45 billion dollars in government bailout funds, defended their decision to hold a five day Super Bowl carnival in Tampa as part of a sponsorship deal with the NFL, amidst cries of outrage and condemnation this week.

Their rationale, it seems was that the event was “part of our traditional banking business” and that the event was justified based on the “underlying revenue generating potential.”

Even Wells Fargo called off several of their recognition events and perks for 2009 except in cases in which doing so would generate “no meaningful savings.”  Read more...

Ok, I admit; my familiarity with Keynesian Economics as proposed by the late British economist John Maynard Keynes was very limited until I read the LA TIMES article “Stimulus Dusts Off An Old Theory” by Washington reporter Peter G. Gosselin on Sunday, January 11.

It seems that Keynes argued in the 1930’s that governments could end the Depression by spending heavily to maintain demand for goods and services until frightened consumers and damaged businesses gained the courage to resume buying and selling on their own.  Read more...