excerpt from High Alert: How the Internet Reformation is causing a financial hurricane – and how to profit from it:
The elaborate financial regulatory structure surrounding the West’s securities and commodities markets are barriers to entry rather than guarantors of fair play. In the United States, anyway, they could hardly be anything else. Both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the now split-in-two NASD are monstrous morphs of unconstitutional creations. In the United States, anyone aspiring to own a broker-dealer is obliged to “join” the NASD — a government imposition that travels well beyond the borders of restraint-of-trade. And that’s just the beginning. FBI background checks, NASD tests, inspections, expenses, taxes, fees and sundry considerations — all must be confronted before the harassed businessperson brokers or “deals” a single stock.
Both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the NASD regulatory commission have so many rules and regulations on their books that either group can fine or suspend a business into oblivion should they choose to do so. This is an enormous power, but it is aimed at the “little guy” —the supplicant attempting to do business in the world’s most populous and boisterous securities arena. It is increasingly difficult. Worse still, as the US regulatory structure is exported around the world, other markets become more difficult to do business in. Only the world’s largest firms will have the resources and power to “capture” the regulators, hire the lawyers and generally provide a level of legal responsiveness that the 21st
century’s financial environment will demand.