The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or FINRA as it is known, is one of Wall Street’s most obscure, yet powerful, institutions. It bills itself as the financial service industry’s self-regulatory organization, separate from state regulators or the kahunas in D.C., like the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve. It’s also a bizarrely profitable enterprise. In 2021, FINRA had revenue of $1.4 billion, nearly 80 percent of which, or $1.1 billion, came from fees for the regulatory services that it provided to the very Wall Street firms that it was regulating. FINRA had nearly $220 million of net income in 2021, around half of which came from realized and unrealized investment gains on its multi-billion dollar portfolio of stocks and bonds. So, you know, not to put too fine a point on it, but FINRA has a bit of a built-in conflict of interest.