Several of the modest-sized investment houses say they should not have to buy back auction-rate securities which they sold to their customers. TDAmeritrade (AMTD), Oppenheimer (OPY), Raymond James (RJF), and several other discount brokers and financial firms have a novel and spurious defense. Imagine Raymond James saying that it wants to blame Morgan Stanley (MS) for the poor performance of one of the MS mutual funds. If a Raymond James customer loses money in a fund managed by Morgan, all parties understood that there was some risk. And, Raymond James made a commission selling that investment to its customer.It would not ask Morgan to make the client whole.