BoA CEO Ken Lewis announced today that he has notified the Board of Directors of his decision to retire, effective December 31, 2009.

Half of 500 RIAs surveyed gave a top rating to job satisfaction, up 10 percent from last quarter, says TD Ameritrade. A rally will do that.

“Financial advisors who are supposed to recommend the best products for clients needs are often paid by the product providers. ‘This creates an unhealthy focus among providers on designing products that sell [to advisors] rather than on products that clients need.’” That’s according to Financial Times’ journos Gillian Tett and Kate Burgess in a series of articles called, “the Future of Investing.”

That, in just 41 words, is the argument for being a fee-only, fiduciary—where the fee is paid by the client. And yet the whole issue of turning every advisor, whether he be at a broker/dealer or at an RIA, into a fiduciary is turning out to be a vexing problem. B/ds have so many issues that complicate matters—investment banking relationships, proprietary trading issues and the like. For me, the answer is pretty simple: Anyone who calls himself a financial advisor should be a fiduciary. If you just want to broker the sale of stocks, bonds and mutual funds, just call yourself that, a broker.

The Tax Foundation, a non-partisan lobby group in D.C., recently published a chilling finding, well, scary for those of who believe in limited government and personal liberty. In shrort, Obama is busy building a welfare state in which most Americans become in effect clients (wards) of the state. (Of course, you probably noticed this on your own.) I can’t say their findings any better, so I am just going to quote from a recent report.

“As a Group, Bottom 70 Percent of Families Will Receive More Benefits Than They Pay in Taxes Under Obama Plan.”

The report goes on: New Tax Foundation “Fiscal Incidence” Model Measures the Income Redistribution Caused by Federal Spending As Well As Taxes

Washington, DC, September 21, 2009 — New reports from the Tax Foundation show that President Obama’s policy proposals will increase the financial dependence of middle-income Americans on the federal government.

“Attempts to put ‘price tags’ on health care and cap-and-trade proposals vary among government agencies and think tanks,” said Tax Foundation President Scott Hodge, “but one vital question has been left unanswered: Counting all federal taxes and spending, how would these policies affect American families’ financial ties to the government? The foundation’s new ‘fiscal incidence model’ answers that question.”

“Currently the bottom 60 percent of the income spectrum receives more in federal spending than they pay in federal taxes,” said Hodge. “By 2012, if President Obama’s proposals on taxes, health care and climate change become law,

New reports from the Tax Foundation show that President Obama’s policy proposals will increase the financial dependence of middle-income Americans on the federal government. . . . .”

Leave it to Rochdale Securities Analyst Dick Bove to cast a gimlet eye on the financial pay debate brewing in Washington. Bove is critical of the U.S. government, pointing out that sports stars earn more, on average, than bankers. And since sports leagues are generally exempted from federal antitrust law, “One might argue that sports leagues are government sponsored oligopolies. As a result of restraining trade in this fashion, government allows sports figures to earn incomes at the peak of American industry. One might also argue that by establishing trade restraints in this sector, government believes that entertainment should be valued more highly than the financial and productive sectors of the economy where restraint of trade is illegal.”

To reach this conclusion, Bove compared the pay of the top 15 sports figures and the top 15 executives of both financial and non-financial firms. Bove says that the average total compensation of the top 15 ahletes was $40 million per year (median $31m); “the top non-financial executives received $39 million on average (median $30 million) and the top 15 financial executives received an average of $30 million (median $21 million).” He says the average NBA player makes $5 million per year and the average MLB player makes $3 million. “The average employee for Goldman Sachs is estimated at $800,000 this year.”

With Washington spoiling to put pay restraints on bankers, Bove says the government apparently “believes that allocating funds to [the financial] sector is not as productive for the economy as, say, being a shooting guard for the Los Angeles Lakers, or a third baseman for the New York Yankees.”

Of course, when Babe Ruth was asked why he made more than Hoover, he responded, “I had a better year than he did.”

Former ML brokerage head Bob McCann to ask NYS judge today to force BoA to drop non-compete so that he can take another job. UBS, perhaps?

Wirehouse reps control twice the assets of their regional peers and nearly five times the assets of an independent b/d rep. –Cerulli

Forget what Obama says about his proposed health care program, use this column, published in late July in the New York Post and written by Dick Morris (a former Clinton advisor), as a true guide to what Obama means. Hint: His rhetoric is Orwellian. “The president assures us that he will cut health-care spending . . . by adding $1 trillion to healch-care spending.” And so on.

Remember, earlier this year, when Goldman Sachs reported great profits? CEO Lloyd Blankfein advised employees not to show off their money, especially given that many other Americans were suffering in a recession not seen since the 1970s. Well, so much for the boss’ advice. more

The SEC sent a warning to b/d execs about recruiting bonuses paid to FAs; do they create conflicts of interest.? http://bit.ly/mNOOR