American Bankruptcy Institute - ABI

finance a la shmoop what is a self-regulatory organization or SRO and

no it's not standing-room-only SRO throw me the money yeah well yeah it's [Standing room only sign appears at dance floor]

something like that alright so here's the sitch its 1927 and the headlines are

riddled with stories of city slickers getting rich on Wall Street investing in [Newspaper front page appears]

things poor farmer Joe never heard of and couldn't even spell if he tried and

wheat ain't one of the things Beauregard is investing in so along comes farmer [Beauregard appears from cornfield]

Joe at just the wrong time literally betting the farm on velcro parachutes

only to go bankrupt after the market crash and multiple physical human [People falling from sky]

crashes that followed yeah look out below

then came the various 1933-34 and other acts all of which tried to further

legislate fair and square dealing in the investing world in the US well if you [People shake hands]

were living outside of the US well you were on your own ha well one of the [Man holding Canada flags]

things that came along was the SEC the Securities and Exchange Commission which

was given powers to regulate and pursue bad dealers well stock brokers bore the [Stockbroker in a suit appears]

brunt of much blame for unfair or bad selling practices to the ignorant the

unqualified the you know farmer hand but the brokerage industry realized quickly

that it would be dead on its own or at least regulated to death if it didn't [Death walks up to stockbroker]

step up and manage its own people so along came a variety of SRO or

self-regulatory organizations which lived ostensibly outside of the direct

control of the legislative bodies behind them and in a strange way they are

vastly more effective why well because stockbrokers know how other stockbrokers [Stockbroker laughing and reading a book]

cheat catching the bad eggs is a whole lot easier when you're putting them in [Man picks up egg from basket]

your own basket rather than into your you know hula hoop so today FINRA is the [Egg thrown into hoola hoop]

largest and most pervasive SRO and it manages myriad elements of Wall Street

and the investing community world in America and a little bit beyond yeah so

if you're dying to learn more about FINRA we've got you covered we can throw

you the video that we did it's Spielberg it's fun for that one [Jerry watching FINRA shmoop video]