The Liberty Papers

In a thread at Reason’s hit and Run, during a discussion where Enron was cited as an example of what happens when governments fail to regulate private behavior, frequent commenter fluffy wrote an insightful comment which is well worth reading in full. The second half of her comment read:

It is customary in the US for the Wall Street markets to be seen as the embodiment of unbridled capitalism, and they really aren’t. What they are is a complex system of federal regulation designed to foster “confidence” in publicly-traded companies, to facilitate the growth of those companies via debt and capital aggregation and intermediation. Their existence is a deliberate policy choice of the state, to attempt to use regulation to make it possible for small investors to trust people they have never met and of whom they have no knowledge – in order to allow corporations to grow larger, or to grow more quickly, than they would have in the days when trust was based on the personal or family qualities of the entrepreneur behind the corporation or the bank doing the underwriting for the corporation’s stock. The complex rules regarding accounting, corporate reporting, transparency, etc., are designed to allow corporations and investors to trust each other without actually having to do anything to establish trust beyond participating in the regulated system. Traders who use trading apps uk as well as trading resources from China, Australia, the USA, etc need to know that companies they’re trading in are not going to foil their investments and that their investment is totally legitimate.

This has two unintended consequences. First, it allows corporations to be much larger and more powerful than they would otherwise be. The social and economic effects of this are open to debate. Second, it creates a situation where the “incentive problem” MNG talks about looms pretty large. As long as a corporation can do the bare minimum necessary to keep the SEC from shutting them down, they are in a position to command broad respect from investors that they may not deserve. The highly technical nature of the regulations in question also creates a milieu where a company like Arthur Andersen can begin to see its task as ensuring technical compliance and nothing else; the exotic techniques their consultants were using to build earnings or smooth earnings in that context begin to look not like “frauds” but simply “innovation”. By trying to facilitate the operation of the market, the state has in a sense corrupted it, or at least created an environment where corruption can hide behind the wall of paper the SEC requires.

But why has this corruption occurred? Why wouldn’t it happen in a private stock market? Well, a thought experiment will explain why the government intervention is corrupting. Imagine two stock markets. One, the Boston Stock Exchange is interested in attracting investors with assurances that their money will be safe. This is the kind of one many who check the robinhood app review (or other reviews) would be drawn to most likely. The other, the New York Stock Exchange does not care. The owners of the Boston Stock Exchange publish a set of accounting standards and demand that any company that trades on their stock exchange must follow those rules and publish those reports, thus helping people who would be seeking information from TradeZero and other stock market trading platforms. The New York Stock exchange does not have that requirement.

Some investors choose only to invest money in companies trading on the Boston Stock exchange. They eschew the New York exchange. In the meantime investors who are less choosy (or more foolish) continue to invest in companies on the NY exchange. Some people might not agree with this decision. Of course, some investments will suit some people, whilst others might not be interested. In order to find the best investment, it might be worth using some Investment Apps. That could be useful and it should help people to invest properly. Anyway, as a result of these investments, the companies that invest in meeting the requirements of the Boston exchange have access to additional capital that they couldn’t get if they were limited only to getting it from the NY Stock exchange. If the additional capital is worth the expenses involved in meeting the Boston standards, a company will rationally choose to adopt the Boston standards. Companies that find the additional cost not to provide sufficient benefit will not adopt the standards. Those companies will forego being traded on the Boston exchange and will make do with the capital available in New York.

In this scenario, the cost of adopting accounting rules is an investment in the business, much like the cost of marketing or the cost of insurance. Companies that choose to spend the money will attempt to ensure that it is well spent, that they are necessary for investor protection. There will be a negotiation between investors, the Boston Stock exchange, accountants and the companies being audited to arrive at meaningful standards that satisfy everybody. In the commercial insurance industry there instances of fraud tend to be aberrations rather than systematic because this very process is in place.

Now let us assume that for a variety of reasons the U.S. government passes a law mandating that all companies meet the Boston standards. Immediately all the companies trading exclusively on the New York exchange are slapped with an additional cost that they don’t want. The benefit of compliance will be reduced since the capital funds available in Boston will now be spread over many more companies. These companies, having been saddled with an unwanted cost will attempt to reduce the cost. They will seek out corrupt auditors who will rubber stamp their records. In the meantime the auditors who specialized in Boston accounting rules, now assured of a captive market, have to expend less effort pleasing their customers, the stock exchanges. In fact, they merely have to satisfy government regulators to keep their licenses, so they will pay less attention to the officers of the stock exchange. Since the government regulators, unlike the Boston Stock exchange, face no losses should they certify a corrupt regulator, they have a much lower incentive to ensure that the auditors are doing a good job.

At this point the accounting industry will not only become corrupt, it will also stagnate. The process that causes the stagnation is quite straightforward:

Let us assume that a couple of investors think that the Boston system is flawed. So they come up with a new system, and establish a stock exchange in Chicago which insists upon these alternate standards. Let us further assume that they convince a number of investors to agree with them, to the point where a few companies are interested in adopting the new standards. Whereas before the companies would merely have to switch to the Chicago system and to abandon the Boston system, they are not allowed to do this. They must continue to spending the money required to comply with the Boston system. If they want to meet the Chicago rules, they must purchase this as an additional cost. And, if the Chicago sytem contradicts the Boston system they cannot adopt the system at all.

This sets up a nearly insurmountable hurdle for anyone to adopt the Chicago system. And there is little chance of the Chicago system being mandated, because there will be many people with a vested interest in keeping the Boston system in place. Only in a time of crisis will the adoption of the Chicago system be considered by the legislature. And, if they should mandate it, they will be mandating an untested system. Should the system not work out as advertised, they could set back the industry dramatically as is happening as a result of the Sarbanes Oxley law.

If people truly wish to protect investors, they would lobby for the immediate dissolution of the SEC and allow stock markets to compete again on the quality of auditing. We would see a dramatic improvement in investor satisfaction as Stock Exchanges were not limited to competing for customers using price.