Project 2025, a policy initiative under the direction of the conservative Heritage Foundation, is calling for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) to be abolished and folded into the Securities and Exchange Commission.

FINRA, which is not a government agency but a self regulatory organization that operates under the jurisdiction of the SEC, is one of several entities Project 2025 has advocated eliminating. Another candidate is the Department of Education.

“To reduce costs and improve transparency, due process, congressional oversight and responsiveness ... FINRA should be abolished, and their regulatory functions should be merged with the SEC. With regulatory authority delegated by the government ... FINRA has proved to be ineffective, costly, opaque, and largely impervious to reform,” stated the Project 2025 Mandate for Change.

In the absence of merging FINRA into the SEC, the GOP recommended that all self-regulatory organization fines, including those imposed by FINRA, should go either to a newly established investor reimbursement fund or to the Treasury. “SROs should not have a financial interest in imposing fines,” the document said.

"I don't know of a SINGLE investor who has hired FINRA to protect them"

Their purported role is a sham and smoke screen that emboldens them to behave in ways that are contrary to anyones interests but their own.

With the fall of Chevron and the earlier indication in the Alpine case that FINRA's "enforcements" are wholly unconstitutional they should be forced to liquidate the $1.7B they are hiding in Goldman-Sachs.

Maybe a class-action lawsuit by the investing public to force the matter is in order....

Link to article: https://www.fa-mag.com/news/conservative-manifesto-project-25-says-finra-should-be-abolished-78740.html

Gary Gensler appears to be resigning and Nov 18 is the rumored date (EDIT to clarify this is a rumor). He came in with big promises of reform and major changes - I was very optimistic on his term. That said, it's disappointing that almost none of the big changes happened, and we're left pretty much where we started.