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So the long awaited Wall Street settlement is a fait accomopli (yes, I know that's a French phrase - get over it!), but will it change the way Wall Street does business? More important, will you get any of your nest egg back?

Let's look at the size of the settlement: $1.4 billion dollars, including one of the largest penalties ever levied by securities regulators -- but just a drop in the Wall Street's bucket. Compared to the estimated $1 trillion major brokerage firms made in underwriting fees - the fees charged for bringing an issue public and distributing it to investors - the settlement amounts to about one tenth of one percent of the industry's investment banking revenues.

Therein lies the rub. There is so much money to be made by brokerage firms playing analyst and investment banker that deals such as this settlement won't change the "business as usual" mindset. Firms will be a bit more circumspect about it (no more amusing e-mails). They'll adopt the spy mentality and meet at the zoo. While analysts may rely a bit more on their own research and less on their needs for investment banking business, the system won't die. Investment banking has historically subsidized Wall Street research, which still accounts for 95 percent of all stock coverage.

Which brings us to the issue of the quality of the research and who will be producing it. If investment banks can't use analysts' research as a marketing tool to lure clients, conventional wisdom says those banks will simply exit the business. It's already happening. At the height of the dot-com frenzy in March of 2000, there were 3,600 analysts covering 5,900 stocks, according to Zack's Investment Research. That figure has dropped 23 percent to 3,000 analysts covering about 4,500 stocks.

So what do small companies do for coverage to raise their public profile? They'll have to ante up cash. Thanks to a provision in the settlement requiring Wall Street to pay for independent research to complement in-house reports, new research houses will pop up and results of their ability to successfully pick stocks will have to be made public, similar to the way Morningstar ranks the ability of mutual fund managers. But big research concerns won't bother, because many of their big institutional clients don't want to share the research with the little guys, the investing public. The kind of research that will be available to the small investor will be lacking in quality.

And what about small-to-mid-sized businesses that have a great idea or product and would like to go public? It's going to be a tough row to hoe, and nearly impossible to find capitalization now that analysts are forbidden to initiate coverage as part of an initial public offering or and IPO deal. Already market conditions have forced IPO volume to drop precipitously and this deal will likely worsen the situation while the big underwriters dominate what little business being generated as their distribution system is firmly in place.

There is a bright spot in this settlement. Brokerages won't be able to add insult to injury by claiming a tax rebate or other benefits for as insurance against fines and penalties. And this settlement doesn't bar individual litigation. Some say this settlement opens the door for many individual lawsuits, and can't you see the "ambulance chasers" jumping on this bandwagon? Sure, the settlement establishes a $387 million restitution fund, but when you consider the $7 trillion investors lost, none of the deserving investors will get rich.

You could go the private lawsuit way, but as our March 7 broadcast pointed out, it's costly and time-consuming, and payouts are on average a nickel or a dime on every dollar lost. And you must opt out of any class action lawsuits your lawyer may bring if you chose the final option, arbitration.

But arbitration is often the only legal recourse available to investors who believe they were wronged. Most brokerages make their customers sing a waiver, agreeing to submit disputes to a three-member arbitration panel whose decision if final and binding. Those that win generally have a lawyer file an arbitration claim, and the case can often be resolved in 18 months or less.

So this settlement is a symbolic gesture at best. You can neither regulate nor legislate ethics, morality or doing what's right. The need to point fingers and make someone "pay" works in a bear market when investors are fuming, but wait until the next boom cycle, when money once again acts like an aphrodisiac and the tendency to take advantage of the weak whenever possible rears its ugly head.