The SEC deals Wall Street a Blow

[anarchy]

[eynon81]

what's all this nonsense, f**k the SEC...
(reads link)
oh that's kinda cool.

but what does the IRS have to say?

[Indy]

I agree it's a cool idea but I wouldn't start dancing on Wall St.'s grave just yet. Just sayin'.

But is this not the original idea behind investing: everybody goes in, everybody gets a profit proportional to their investment?

Nowadays we have things like flash trading which... I mean, WTF?

[Professor]

I just see croudfunding being ripe for abuse. Most people who donate money won't do (and won't be able to do) proper due diligence. So, you get a lot of people donating money because, "Hey, that sounds like a good idea."

As a friend of mine once said (very successful entrepreneur and inventor), "Everyone has a million dollar ideas - they're a dime a dozen. The million dollars only comes with proper execution." There simply isn't any good way to tell if the person has a valid business model, has the experience needed to execute properly, if the market will bear his business, etc.

[exploited]

I am with Professor on this one. The majority of people have no business making investments on their own. They don't understand how business works, they don't know the people involved, they don't have any idea if the market actually exists, and they certainly don't have the historical perspective required to understand trends and long-term investment.

That being said, I think crowdfunding would be great for something that requires a tangible asset to begin with, and that has the people asking for a loan to be invested. Something like mortgages - you have the house, you have the family who wants to live in it, so a hundred thousand people chip in two dollars and offer it to them at a decent, sustainable interest rate. That would be awesome.

[spacemonkey]

The entire wall st thing is nothing but a nest of parasites imo. Trying to get something from nothing. Scam after scam, when they fail, no big deal. Taxpayers to the rescue,lol.

[Indy]

Well Professor is right I would suppose. In that there's really no structure.

As far as Exploited, if what you say is true, you just made the argument for why privatizing SS is a bad idea.

[eynon81]

[eynon81]

as to Prof and Ex's fears:
the SEC seems to have put some reasonable restrictions in place that deal with your concerns.

[Professor]