Quote from jimrockford:
I think, after seeing your previous posts in this thread, that it's ludicrous for you to describe your disagreement with me as "respectful". Primitive and demented would be more accurate. I will now respond to some of your questions.
Your statement that laws and government rules do not interfere with NYSE competitors is similarly demented.
Yes, there are competitors to NYSE, but there would be more competition if anti-competitive government rules and laws were abolished. It is just demented to argue that the existence of competition implies the absence of anti-competitive rules and laws. It is also demented to argue that anti-competitive rules and laws and a monopoly do not reduce choice.
Your theory that free market competition cannot be tolerated, because it will inevitably result in mergers and concentration and a new monopoly contrary to the public interest, comes to us from Karl Marx. You are spouting Marxist economic theory, without even knowing it is Marxist, and yet your previous postings falsely accuse me of communism. Government policy should break monopolies, not protect them. If monopoly is bad, which you seem to be saying here, then this contradicts your belief that government should support the specialist monopoly.
Doing a better job means executing orders at lower cost, and more immediately when they are marketable and of small enough size to be suitable for electronic trading; and also processing cancellations more quickly. It means displaying executable quotes instead of bogus quotes.
One of the rules that favors specialists is the old trade-thru rule. How could you not know about the trade-thru rule? Do you even trade?
Government support of the specialist system reduces choices for companies seeking capital, and for traders and investors and speculators seeking to trade.
An example of the government's gradual reduction in support for the specialist system is its change to the trade-thru rule, soon to be effective, which will free electronic markets to trade thru non-electronic specialist quotes. This change deprives the specialist of the ability he previously enjoyed, by which he could temporarily block other market centers from trading, simply by posting a bogus and effectively unexecutable specialist quote.
We should demand that the Government accelerate its withdrawal of support from the specialist system. We should demand laws which help, rather than hinder, competition against the specialists.