(FORTUNE Magazine) – A broker I didn't know called the other day offering me a ''hot new issue.'' It was one of five calls in two days from a single securities firm. And it was one of a steady succession of calls I get week in and week out, usually early in the morning, since that's when those of us with small businesses are apt to answer our own phones. Who among us in business hasn't had this experience -- and not just at the office? And what does it say about the securities industry and the slump it is currently experiencing? The answer is that this is an industry with more to clean up than the much publicized insider trading schemes. I remember when the manager of the local brokerage office was a person of some prestige. Now his job seems to be recruiting a lot of young talent, sitting them at banks of telephones, and urging them to make their quota of cold calls. The devices the callers use to get through to a prospect are ingenious for their lack of taste. ''Please hold for the senior vice president in New York,'' was one I encountered. It didn't work. I come from Boston, where we're not that impressed with New York. A FORMER West Coast newspaper executive tells of getting a midday call that went something like this: ''Hi, this is Rhoda from the exchange in Beverly Hills. Remember those silver futures I suggested you buy last fall? Well, if you'd listened to me, you'd have made ten grand by now.'' The executive had never heard from Rhoda before. As far as I know, there is no exchange -- no legitimate one -- in Beverly Hills. The problem is by no means limited to fly-by-night operators. Major firms -- Shearson Lehman Hutton, Drexel Burnham Lambert, and Merrill Lynch, among others -- all have what they call financial consultant or account executive training programs, which entail cold calling. A senior vice president at Merrill Lynch told me his company hires 1,400 to 1,600 trainees a year. How are they generating business? By getting on the phone. Drexel says it uses part-timers to make some of the calls. DESPITE their lack of experience, the callers do get results, the firms say. That may be so, but the only thing most of them have to offer is a gift of gab. What the recruits sell is usually what the firms tell them to. That ''hot new issue'' one of the callers tried to push on me, for instance, was being underwritten by his own firm -- something he didn't mention until I asked. I sat down to write an angry article on the abuse of telemarketing. Now I realize that the subject is not the technique but the incredible stupidity of the abusers, the nation's stock brokerage firms. The vice president I talked to in New York asked me incredulously whether I really thought that the brokerage business was perceived badly because of all the calls. That confirmed my suspicions that the people on the 44th floor have no idea what's happening. What he and the rest of his industry should understand is that this is one reason admired investment houses are in trouble. They are systematically demolishing their greatest asset -- their credibility. They present one image in their advertising, and then the phone calls make them sound like totally different firms. They shouldn't blame their problems on October 19.