NASD head Glauber is the Master of Double Talk

In a recent speech Glauber made to the NASD Spring Securities Conference in Hollywood, Fla., for some reason he attempted to soften his normal attacks against indexed annuities with some token gestures that his critical comments have “nothing to do with protecting or commandeering turf.” Some of his efforts to not look so territorial included him saying that “We (the NASD) are not proposing any new rule-making or expansion of our jurisdiction.” I only wish I had been able to see video of Mr. Glauber’s face when he spun this BIG one, because the words had hardly left his lips before he went on to say that “If Washington feels there is a void in the way an industry regulates itself, a new government-managed structure is almost certain to emerge.”

This speech reveals much about Mr. Glauber’s intended plan of attack in his attempt to assume control of indexed annuity sales. He is focusing his comments toward bureaucratically minded politicians in Washington for a reason. Indexed annuities are clearly defined as an insurance product and the insurance departments of each state have complete jurisdictional regulation regarding the products, the licensing of agents, and the sales methods approved within their state. We know that this intrusion by Glauber and his cronies from the securities business, who are making very public critical comments about a completely different industry, is all about control of the money. This IS a turf war and what Glauber and the NASD want is to get the billons it has lost to the insurance industry in recent years by the movement of huge amounts of money from brokerage accounts into indexed annuities, back into the hands of its members.

For the NASD to take on one state at a time, however, would be a long and arduous task. But by painting HIS personal concerns about indexed annuities as a national problem, Glauber is lobbying for Washington to do the dirty work of nationalizing control of this facet of the insurance industry and creating a void that would lead to the federal government handing over this new regulatory task to the NASD. There is already a growing debate about forming a national insurance regulatory body for some insurance products. Glauber is simply riding this wave for his own benefit.

From the perspective of the NASD, once this issue is taken from the control of the states and put under federal control, the NASD, as an existing national self-regulatory body, could just step forward and offer to be the saving entity that can solve this manufactured national dilemma about indexed annuities. But Glauber is simultaneously protecting his turf from other possible agencies taking over this task as he further commented that the NASD has to be tough to preserve the current self-regulatory system and ward off the creation of a new federal securities regulatory agency that might be similar.

In a nutshell the tactics Glauber is following to take over control of indexed annuities is to first confuse their identity as insurance products; then criticize their current regulatory structure; followed by alarming the public and thus Washington that there needs to be some uniform national regulation; and finally promoting that a new agency is not necessary since they could just step in and take over the regulation of indexed annuities. And that IS the agenda and ultimate goal of Glauber and the entire securities industry.