keeping investments safe in us

Attached is an article that I read in March about the same time as Opus went under. It is interesting to note that in the US it would appear to be common practise for brokerage account holders not to have the legal title to their shareholdings (as currently argued by ANZ with Opus).

The US would appear to still be operating under the "we are big trust us" model. Who knows what would have happened if Bear Stearns hadn't been bailed out recently. It would have made the Opus debacle look like a teddy bears picnic. So it looks like the US have some serious work to do to get their margin lending practises up to the more customer centric standard in Australia.

http://blogs.marketwatch.com/greenberg/2008/03/how-to-keep-your-investments-safe/