

No, You Don’t Get to Have a Private Stock Market, Sorry - uptown
http://blogs.wsj.com/financial-adviser/2012/03/13/no-you-dont-get-to-have-a-private-stock-market-sorry/

======
awongh
this is an opinion piece related to this bloomberg article:
[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-12/sec-said-to-plan-
ac...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-12/sec-said-to-plan-action-over-
felix-sharespost-in-stock-inquiry.html)

I have never quite understood how these secondary markets work, is this
article saying that they are going to shut down completely? Are there laws
regulating selling your own shares of a non-public company, or is it just that
a trading market cannot be setup for doing that?

------
maxharris
The next time you hear something bad about capitalism, keep this in mind: we
haven't had capitalism in this country for over a century.

It's no one else's business where someone decides to invest, as long as
there's no actual fraud by any party. When that line is crossed, that's where
the government has a proper role.

To put it concretely: the government should be protecting us from wealth
destroyers like Bernie Madoff. It has no business prosecuting wealth creators
like Martha Stewart (remember also that it came close to doing the same thing
Steve Jobs, with the backdating "scandal"). Going after heroes like Stewart
and Jobs is downright immoral.

Furthermore, the fact that Madoff ran his scheme for as long as he did
(decades) should tell you something about how practical an idea the SEC really
is.

Edit: I just noticed the title for a second time now. "Get to have"? That is
incredibly wrong and offensive way to phrase it. It should be "allowed to
make." A stock market isn't a naturally occurring thing - it takes living,
breathing, thinking human beings with the freedom to act to create a stock
market. _That_ is what they're ultimately stopping.

