by Pam Martens and Russ Martens at Wall Street on Parade
The Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gary Gensler, announced in June that he was going to tackle the structure of the U.S. stock market – ostensibly to make it fairer to the little guy. His plans were released last Wednesday in a mountain of paper that even Wall Street veterans are having difficulty digesting. (See here, here, here, here, and here.)
While the overall thrust of the proposed changes appears to be to provide more transparency to order execution, the proposals fail to address key structural issues that have allowed the U.S. stock market to operate as an institutionalized wealth transfer system — moving vast sums of money from the pockets of average Americans to the richest one percent.
Both Congress and the SEC were put on notice on March 30, 2014 that the U.S. stock market is rigged. That’s the date that bestselling author and Wall Street veteran, Michael Lewis, was interviewed on 60 Minutes about the allegations in his just released book, “Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt.”
The interview opens with Steve Kroft asking Lewis what the headline is for his new book. Lewis responds: “The United States stock market, the most iconic market in global capitalism, is rigged.”
When asked to explain just who it is that’s rigging the stock market,…
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