The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week

5. Suisse Cheesy

You know, we read all the way through the complaint that the Massachusetts Securities Division filed on Monday against Credit Suisse First Boston. We thought all these allegations of securities analysts under the thumb of fee-hungry investment bankers would be kind of amusing, in an underbelly-of-Wall-Street kind of way. We were wrong.

After plowing through the 20-page complaint and all 18 appendices, all we at the Lab can say is we're depressed. If you want to be depressed, too, read it yourself.

More compellingly than a similar complaint filed by the New York State Attorney General against Merrill Lynch (MER Quote), the CSFB complaint tells a tale of compromised research, deceived investors, and a boatload of people saying one thing and meaning another.

Any page at random is enough to make the little guy weep. Like the internal email regarding the Securities Industry Association's move last year to prohibit the linking of analysts' compensation to investment banking deals. "To assume that the SIA statement is going to upset our applecart is incorrect," wrote one CSFB exec at the time. "This is about appearance and structure rather than substance," wrote another, in response to a related discussion about having analysts not reporting to bankers.

In a statement this week, CSFB complained that the Massachusetts complaint could "delay and undermine" its current "specific, concrete plan" to separate investment banking and research. CSFB also says Massachusetts mischaracterizes its past compensation system for analysts.

We're all for separating banking from research. But, uh, wasn't that supposed to be done last year?

Judge for yourself.