2
Financial industry tries image revamp
SIFMA logo
To view this content, Javascript must be enabled and Adobe Flash Player must be installed.
TEXT OF STORY
Kai Ryssdal: You remember that big push for change from a certain presidential campaign last year? We learned today the financial services industry is out for a little change of its own. It's launched a publicity campaign to fight back against what it sees as unfair criticism. Bloomberg News reports today that the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, that's one of Wall Street's biggest lobbying groups, is pushing the image revamp. And it's spending nearly $85,000 a month to win back the good graces of the outside world. From New York, Ashley Milne-Tyte reports.
ASHLEY MILNE-TYTE: The Association asked pollsters to gauge the public mood. What they found wasn't pretty. Cornell Belcher runs Brilliant Corners Research, a polling company. He worked on the Obama campaign and was hired by SIFMA to help it "embrace change."
CORNELL BELCHER: It is part of this new patriotism that's sweeping this country where corporations need to be held to a higher standard as well. You know, you've got to be a good corporate citizen, you've got to be a corporate patriot in this environment or the consumers are gonna punish you.
Rather than conducting a high-profile media blitz SIFMA is taking a grass-roots approach. The group is using lesser known, untainted regional financial firms to get its message to Congress via local politicians. A large part of that message is that the securities industry has its own reform ideas.
Dan Simon is managing director at Cognito, a PR company for the financial services industry. He says the industry could have acted much faster to protect its image...
DAN SIMON: Actually being ahead of regulators or being at least, being seen to be ahead of kind of public sentiment is absolutely crucial.
SIFMA recently announced its own recommendations on executive pay. Hugh Johnson is chief economist at Johnson Illington Advisors. He says Congress has been passing reforms as fast as a speeding train. The securities industry is on a PR push to slow the regulatory reform express.
HUGH JOHNSON: Which has already left the station. And they want to become very much a part of shaping that regulation so that it doesn't go too far and do serious damage to Wall Street.
He says they know if they don't act, they risk being shunted aside.
In New York, I'm Ashley Milne-Tyte for Marketplace.
They need more than an image change. First, they need to get rid of the hypocrisy. Second, they need to understand Business and Finance 101. Third, they need to stop buying the government so we will stop having monopolies and let real competition take place. Fourth, they need to understand the difference between real investment versus computer games to extract money on the financial spreads across the globe. Fifth, and most important they need to understand a healthy really productive economy with a strong middle class is what really makes America and the world economy strong.
Finally, they need to stop believing their own overblown egos. Since when does sinking the world economy deserve extraordinary pay and the basis for pay me more. We had an oops that all of you can pay for, but because we are so smart we should be paid to extraordinary sums to save you. Where is the accountability? How about we get accountability back into the financial system, and heaven help us work in the real economy rather than raping the real economy.
We could start by not killing businesses be extracting huge fees and then spinning out the company with debt it can't support, which went to pay the undeserved fees.
For one I am looking, and hope many will follow, for smaller regional institution that work in the real economy.
