No good deed goes unpunished as they say, to which the NASD would say “Amen.” NASD Chairman Robert Glauber related at a speech this week in London that the agency thought it was making it easier for investment firms by proposing a change in the type of entertainment that is permitted. The proposal filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission would give firms some discretion to decide what’s acceptable, “rather than a hard-and-fast, endless detailed prescriptive rule.”

That didn’t go over well, says Glauber, noting that it unleashed “outrage and indignation” from CEOs and compliance officers. Glauber said the unhappy parties accused the NASD of “legislating morality” and of “threatening to leave them adrift in a sea of uncertainty” about what is allowable. One commenter called the proposal “galactically stupid.”

Glauber said that the American securities industry has lobbied for years for less overbearing regulation, and “now that we’ve proposed one, an argument is made that it’s not prescriptive enough,” said Glauber. “Sometimes it’s hard to win as a regulator.”