NASAA President Abshure Remarks on JOBS Act and Mandatory Arbitration (with Lofchie Comment)

NASAA President Heath Abshure delivered remarks largely targeted against the JOBS Act. He also criticized the use of mandatory arbitration agreements between investors and broker-dealers, particularly where (as in the Schwab case), the effect of these agreements is to prevent investors from participating in class action law suits.

Lofchie Comment: What an apparently strange world we live in where we have (i) a massively regulatory Dodd-Frank that, among other things, hugely expands the duplicative enforcement authority of the States and (ii) a massively deregulatory JOBS Act that, among other things, hugely decreases the regulatory authority of the States. Sometimes, I feel like that all of us market participants are stuck here in the locker, trying to make sense of it. (link to youtube.com)

View remarks in full here (links externally to NASAA website).Link to news story on the Schwab customer agreement: FINRA Hearing Panel with Regard to Arbitration Provisions in Broker-Dealer Customer Agreements (with Lofchie Comment)