And I thought the suspenders, cigars, and jello-shots were a turnoff...

This is yesterday's news, of course, but, after a three year investigation, the SEC fined Fidelity $8 million for accepting $1.6 million worth of swag from brokers. (Let's hope the brokers got a better return on their giving than Fidelity did on its receiving.)

The details of the bounty ranged from the relatively wholesome and innocent favors received by the relatively wholesome and innocent Peter Lynch who was fined for receiving tickets to relatively wholesome and innocent events like The Nutcracker and The Ryder Cup. Lynch, by all accounts one of the good guys, had called the guys on the trading desk for help getting tickets - and the boys on the desk came through for him.

But the boys on the desk were, I'm afraid, up to things that were far less wholesome and innocent - not to mention far more costly - than a couple of comps for The Lion King.

One of the bigger sweeteners was:

a $160,000 junket to Miami, where bachelor party attendees were entertained by female escorts and supplied with ecstasy pills. [Info taken from a Bloomberg article.]

A little more sleuthing on this bachelor party - which lasted three days - and I read that one of the party features was dwarf-throwing. I guess, even with the grass, the ecstasy, and the female escorts there's still a lot of time to kill during a three day bachelor party. No wonder a young man's fancy would turn to a savory sport like dwarf-throwing. But, then, traders will be traders...

In another incident, a broker flew one of the Fido traders, via private jet, to the Super Bowl and was rewarded just days later with a big, fat Tyco - how's that for rich - trade that cost Fidelity $18M. There's no guarantee that Fidelity could have gotten a better deal elsewhere, or that the loss can't be attributed to "market conditions."

But you don't need to be a logician here. Private jet to Super Bowl, ergo I'll trade with you. Post hoc ergo propter hoc, anyone?

(I wonder if the Miami bachelor party was as much fun as the birthday party for Dennis Kozlowski. Or was it for his wife? The one on Sardinia with the ice sculpture of pissing Stoli....)

Marijuana. Flights on the Concorde. Dwarf throwing.

Home girl that I am, I've got my retirement money in Fidelity, and I just don't want to consider that the trader mooshing my money around just spent three days in Miami throwing dwarves - even if he's paid for the privilege himself. Let alone let some broker he's throwing business to pick up the tab.

Whoever Burton Greenwald is, I'm with him:

``It was a highly embarrassing episode for Fidelity,'' Burton Greenwald, a mutual-fund consultant in Philadelphia, said in an interview. ``It created a real blemish on a reputation that it took them years to build.''

Fortunately, "most of the employees cited by the SEC have left the company, and none remain on the trading desk, the firm said. "

Good. Let them go pop ecstasy, cavort with escorts, and throw dwarves on someone else's dime.