The SEC sure has a sense of humor. With everyone screaming for the agency’s blood unless it does something to curb rampant and blatantly speculative high frequency trading, as well as to tighten insider trading regulation, what does the Mary Schapiro-lead circus do? Just the opposite. and even as the commission is weeping that its $1 billion budget is woefully inadequate, the agency decides to reduce its own projected revenue in the form of Section 31 fees, to benefit the High Frequency Scalping brigade. The schizophrenic, sociopathic, deranged lunatics have certainly taken over the asylum at 100 F Street, NW Washington.
“They only call it class war when we fight back.” The SEC is less deranged and incompetent and much more about protecting the interests of an elite few against the rest of us. Never before has class warfare been as obvious or open in the US as it is now.
Seems to me though that the elites are getting scared and desperate. So, now is the time to redouble our efforts, each doing whatever they can, in their own way, to end the corruption and greed that characterized our current financial system. All of us, left, right, or center, are having an impact as anger at and contempt for the criminals who run this country grows stronger every day. And that can and will lead to real change.
It is when the system is under stress that it becomes more blatant in its grasping of public funds to give it new life. The gloves come off and the illusion is secondary, survival its main aim. Lke you said, it is also the best time to put more pressure on the system, to open up avenues of debate into alternative ways of structuring our society and point the finger at the greed and also the inbuilt failings in the present system. We know there are altenatives, we just have to get the public discussing them openly.