Agreed. Any settlement, short of complete divestment of the research unit (not saying I advocate the government forcing this) will fail to remove the conflict of interest problem. I suspect that all these settlements will have the unintended consequence of making investors rely even more on the research which will still be biased and still be no more useful than randonly thowing darts at the Wall Street Journal.
Why would anyone expect unbiased advice from an investment bank? When these investors buy a car, do they expect a Cadillac dealer to give them unbiased opinions on the Cadillac vs. a Lexus?
Exactly. Who would spend thousands of dollars for dog and pony shows, golf outings etc to garner investment banking business and turn around and say something bad about the company's stock before you've had the opportunity to make a couple of million selling it? What a joke.