“Fix the Money, Save the World”: A Lowly Retail Investor’s Suggestions for Enacting Honest, Ethical, and Effective Market Reforms

Please note, I do not in any way speak for any group of investors, retail or otherwise. These are my own thoughts and opinions on what market changes should be enacted based on two years of research and my still limited knowledge. I also recognize the complications with the changes I am going to outline here, but we know beyond a doubt that the “old” system does not work and lends itself to corruption to a degree that is absolutely dangerous to people’s basic human rights — across the globe — to food, water, shelter, and safety.

I was recently asked what “ideal” markets would look like. What I have outlined here is the most current iteration of my thoughts on that subject.

1. The most important change I can think of would be that all assets and markets are on the blockchain, which I think is happening regardless. Most of the world has signed on to toss out outdated settlement systems and move to a transparent, T-0 settlement cycle and structure. It’s a no brainer.
2. Because I have major concerns about CBDC serving as the only mode of currency and concentrating too much power in the hands of government (we’ve seen how that works), I personally think DeFi needs to remain a choice, if not a preferred method, for many investors given the track record of the people currently inhabiting positions of political and economic power with insider knowledge. Many of them are individuals who use those positions to enrich themselves and write laws into existence to create loopholes for their own selfish interests.
3. Simply put, we need to end self-regulation and self-reporting for all banks and hedgefunds. Instead, we need to appoint an independent third party group of regulators composed of free and fair market advocates such as Dennis Kelleher, Pam and Russ Martens of Wall Street on Parade — https://wallstreetonparade.com/ (which by the way is banned across all of reddit), Sal Arnuk, Dave Lauer, and Dr. Susanne Trimbath to determine the quality, ethical integrity, and caliber of our choices and to report and make recommendations on market changes. (Keep in mind the SEC instead of doing that hired a self-interested and ethically compromised consulting firm (BCG) to make recommendations to them — I’m sure you see the conflict of interest. (Source: https://www.sec.gov/files/secorgreformreport-df967.pdf).
4. Anyone involved in creating and constructing legislation regarding capital markets should be restricted from trading and prosecuted consistently and without political bias. No more favors for your buddies to line their pockets.
5. We can easily reserve government funds to bail out pensions and retirement members affected by the inevitable market collateral damage of holding big money accountable. Too big to fail cannot be a mantra, anymore. Save the little guy, leave the rest behind. Hedgefunds, consulting firms, and big banks in their current form are poison to the economy. They made their bed, now they have to lie in it. Period.
6. We need to regulate and increase risk disclosures and move them further up so that such disclosures are timely and proactive instead of dangerous, ineffective, and reactive.
7. Crypto wallet disclosure regulation should be put in place, along with alternative asset markets like energy, real estate, etc. so the SEC and DOJ could tie it all together when, not if, the inevitable corrupt scumbags out there pull nonsense like this again.
8. Speaking of crypto, most of it is not backed by much. That can’t happen. I believe personally that only certain coins/currencies meet the standards of liquidity and asset-backing that would sustain a strong and reliable economy. So, that would need to be addressed. Everything needs to be backed by assets or debt that people can provide liquidity for at any given time. If retail can be margin called at will, the same should apply to big money. Any surviving crypto after what I often refer to as “the flushing of the shitcoins” of course, would have to be staked imho.
9. We need to close every single loophole with one large scale “Anti-Corruptive Practices Act” that eliminates the following effective IMMEDIATELY: dark pools, PFOF, family office exemptions, market makers being for profit entities, and more.
10. We should make it so market makers were never again groups with a vested interest in investments of any kind. Again, non-partisan third party organization.
11. I also believe we should institute regular, MANDATORY audits on a rolling basis of every big bank and hedge funds regarding their risk management and liquidity.
12. Regulators need to actively and aggressively pursue naked shorting to the fullest extent of the law. The people naked shorting companies (or even just flat out shorting them) are not doing so because they think the company will naturally go out of business. They generally make the markets so that the companies they target are actually forced into bankruptcy. It’s inorganic, unethical, and dangerous.
13. We can put in place a series of regulations that require foreign money to go through an auditory review period before entering US markets to ensure there is no dark money flowing through our markets.
14. We need to make sure all trading happens on-exchange with very few if any exceptions. Unfortunately, while I understand the volatility of markets with big trades happening, I also see a huge problem with dark pools and/or unlit or privatized exchanges.
15. It is crucial to stop all hedge funds and big banks from establishing political lobbies and endorsing political candidates on a company wide basis on both sides of the proverbial aisle.
16. We have to reign in the tax shelters and off-shore nonsense that IICJ demonstrated so well in their Panama Papers — https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/.
17. On top of all this, we have to find a way to account for conflicts of inflict in the judiciary system where all of this would likely play out. We would need a thorough review process and would need to select the most unbiased, apolitical, and un-conflicted judges at every level and make sure all conflicts were disclosed prior to hearings.
18. We absolutely have to provide a substantial budgetary increase to the SEC and DOJ so they can adequately tackle all of this and more that they simply cannot keep up with now.
19. It’s incredibly important for everyone keep a much closer eye on conflicts of interest within the financial world and the political world, but I admit that’s a difficult thing to do because you never really know people’s intentions.
20. Finally, if you’re wondering where the money should come from to enact all of this, I’m sure we can “find” it: (https://reason.com/2023/01/18/pentagon-cant-account-for-220-billion-of-gear-given-to-contractors/). If not, we can always just increase the debt ceiling for the millionth time.

I could write about this for years and probably will, but you said I could have the ideal world, so that’s a great start — not perfect by any means, but a start. This market is completely insane and built on a foundation of debt and illiquidity. That’s how economies collapse. Our current capitals markets are seriously detrimental to the basic premises of freedom, equality, and justice, and something big needs to change. Not tomorrow. Today. Now. In this moment. I believe that’s exactly what’s happening, and many of these solutions might in fact be already on track.

In case anyone is interested, there are also a lot of people out there writing on this who I admire and agree with such as:

https://bettermarkets.org/what-we-do/

https://www.urvin.finance/advocacy/we-the-investors-sign-on-letter-2

https://spiramus.com/susanne-trimbath

I’ve written a few things you may want to take a look at…regarding the overarching systemic changes that I believe are happening and that we are consistently seeing across the world and in the headlines…Please excuse my language in the following posts, but I’d rather talk like a layperson than be like the people who walk around in “million dollar” suits doing horrible things but making up euphemisms and excuses for the damage they do.

https://iamnotallama999.medium.com/family-office-fuckery-where-the-uber-rich-hoarde-their-wealth-and-avoid-oversight-like-the-72dbae7d10a1

https://iamnotallama999.medium.com/dear-elitist-one-percent-dickheads-fyi-this-excludes-anyone-working-for-defi-and-on-the-side-of-6dbca6a7ba58

https://iamnotallama999.medium.com/game-over-78d768afa3df

Full Disclosure: At this point, my concern is we are entrenched in corruption so deeply that DeFi may be the only option. We have seen over a century of rampant greed and regulatory bodies who have either willfully ignored it or been poorly equipped to contend with the highly adept lawyers on the other side of this. With DeFi, we would also have clarity and transparency, accountability the likes of which has never before existed, and a level of fairness that does not currently exist. In my opinion, which I put forth some time ago in my Wu Tang thesis, there will be some sort of super hybrid scenario that accomplishes all of the above and more and a shifting of power from the greedy to the giving, from the arrogant to the humble, and from the “old” guard to a better tomorrow.