Government Product Design: Eliot Spitzer's Entry
In 2003, to the accompaniment of the usual government-fundamentalist hoopla, then-Attorney General of New York Eliot Spitzer ordered investment firms under his jurisdiction to purchase and offer for distribution a tightly specified "independent research" product to avoid and correct "abuses" that until his intervention had been rampant in the investment-advisory business.
According to an article in today's Wall Street Journal, this government-designed product seems to have flopped. The orders that brought it into being are set to expire July 26, and it looks as though Spitzer's foray into the design of investment-advice products may end at the same time for lack of public acceptance.
Perhaps Spitzer might find his metier in an area more like marital advice or the design and distribution of products in the commercial-sex industry.
