Mark,

I spent my whole career in the financial industry on the buy side; trust me, this story is a storm in a teacup.  My friends, most of them also spent decades in the industry, also chuckled at the fact that it actually made it to the front-page on WSJ, as a headline!  There are many issues in the brokerage industry that are many times more problematic and deserve more attention.  

- "Soft" payments engaged by most brokers.

- Allocation of hot IPOs to top clients only - pure transfer of payments.  All firms do this, publicly.

- Direct 24/7 access to top analysts by largest institutional investors.  Trust me, if you talk to an analyst often enough, you'll be brain dead not to detect any potential change in his views.

- Restricted conference calls.  I'm probably invited to participate in one at least once a week, by different firms.

- Just received an email from my broker from a large commercial bank, saying that their target price of AAPL is "under review".

If anything Goldman Sachs, believe it or not, is one of the more professional firm to deal with.   Believe me, they know what's over the line, so do their top 50 preferred clients.  Don't underestimate their, and our, intelligence and judgments.