The National Market System: A Successful Adventure in Industry Self-Improvement
![handle is hein.journals/valr70 and id is 795 raw text is: THE NATIONAL MARKET SYSTEM: A SUCCESSFUL
ADVENTURE IN INDUSTRY SELF-IMPROVEMENT
Donald L. Calvin*
N The SEC As a Market Regulator1 Professor Walter Werner
takes the Securities and Exchange Commission to task for alleg-
edly failing to carry out properly its responsibility to regulate the
relationships among securities markets. He sees, in the Commis-
sion's historical performance over the years, the development of a
split personality, in which the sunlight SEC is widely admired
and revered as the investor's friend because it promotes informed
and fair securities trading,2 but the regulatory SEC has disre-
garded its market regulatory functions.
Professor Werner's critique focuses on the regulatory SEC and
leads him to examine the SEC's performance of its congressional
mandate, as expressed in the Securities Acts Amendments of 1975
(1975 Amendments), to oversee the securities industry's develop-
ment of a national market system. His conclusions rely heavily on
serious misconceptions of what Congress intended in 1975 when it
directed the SEC to facilitate establishment of a national market
system.5 Although Professor Werner does not place blame on the
legislators, his real quarrel would not seem to be with the SEC for
failing to do its job properly, but rather with Congress for not as-
signing to the SEC the responsibilities he believes the Commission
should have been given.
In a 1975 article, Professor Werner left little doubt of his admi-
ration for the manner in which the 1975 Amendments were
constructed:
Congress and the [SEC] had apparently done their homework
*Executive Vice President, New York Stock Exchange, Inc.
Werner, The SEC as a Market Regulator, 70 Va. L. Rev. 755 (1984).
2 Id. at 755.
3 Id.
4 Id. at 755-56.
5 Securities Exchange Acts Amendments of 1975, § 11A.(a)(2), 15 U.S.C. § 78k-l(a)(2)
(1982).
785](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/valr70&div=35&collection=journals&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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The National Market System: A Successful Adventure in Industry Self-Improvement
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