Background: Back in the 1990s, Merrill Lynch petitioned the SEC for an exemption to the Investment Advisors Act of 1940 which defined an investment adviser as a person who provides professional advice on how to manage investments or makes investments on behalf of a client. The Act also required that registered investment advisers would be held to a fiduciary standard.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/40300.html
Schapiro also issued an invitation to the general public to join in the rule-making process, ordinarily the province of well-paid specialists representing organizations and companies or scholars with an interest in the outcome, announcing that the SEC has created a Web page to which any member of the public can submit comments at http://sec.gov/spotlight/regreformcomments.shtml.
PS to KurtL:
You need to separate current events and politics...just saying.