What I mean to say is that if the exemptions give certain parties an unfair advantage, then either the exemptions must be eliminated, or everyone must receive these special privileges; why should the MM's be the privied ones ?
Excellent point.... Over the years ....mms have been given privilege.... It used to be that one had to have an Instinet Terminal to be able to post between the bid/ask.... Then Direct Access from a pc became the common way to get between the bid ask.... For many years many WS firms made a lot of money, owning seats, handling flows, setting up mms to get the ss rule exemption.... Seems to me that when fractions were removed......the playing field became more level..... Now the SEC/political bullshit is just that.... Everyone knows that there is a biase towards protecting the big firms.... They are getting slapped big time for over-leveraging....and the truth be known....the fed/SEC really does not know what to do.... The business models are changing fast on WS..... Electronic trading if allowed to work, brings efficiency to changing the label holders on securities.....To be sure, the big firms are not happy about this....and they are using every lobbyist, friend, acquaintance, including selling their mothers to stay afloat.... Stock deals have some ways to go to get efficient....but they should be standard boiler plate and very low cost..... The big firms are people marketers ....who developed trusting clientele....but now one can spend a few minutes on their computers and know more than most brokers..... The writing is on the wall.....the old brokerage/investment bank model model is changing fast....and information is getting handier and cheaper.... It seems to me that the future is going to be the combining of the world's best exchanges...and providing more boilerplate listing, debt services...... The emerging countries will provide many more opportunities...and globalization will take on its shape.... Seriously....what decent pieces are left of the old brokerages will be melded into banks where deposits are gathered.... After all....is it not a natural process for those with deposits to have no risk to high risk options in one place ? And with the computer/internet revolution.....todays brokerages will just become the EF Huttons of the past..... However this does not mean the future is not better in terms of equities....I think quite the opposite.... The need for efficient capital is found in non obligatory non interest debt in the name of electronically traded common stocks worldwide....which also create the better possibility of fairer wealth distribution....The electronic computer trading age has come....and people will be better informed than ever....and will demand more efficiency than ever..... This is why it is so shocking to see the SEC step backwards in time....but seeing how incestual the large corporate/government job mingling cesspool really is...maybe not......