Goldman Sachs Says "**** You America!"

[notyoueither]

The idea of you have to have money to be eligible to make money did strike me as odd.

[KrazyHorse]

It grew out of the last great financial regulatory flurry following the '29 crash

I have no idea what's in Dodd-Frank, and neither does anybody else yet (least of all Dodd or Frank), but I'm sure it's full of nuggets of wisdom like that. Or will be construed by the regulators to be.

I do note that the numbers weren't indexed to inflation, so they're getting less and less exclusive as time goes on. 200k a year in income isn't that high any more...

[notyoueither]

I imagine the idea is to protect the rubes from snake-oil salesmen.

[KrazyHorse]

Yup.

There are other regulations which protect against certain types of salesmanship (for example, when the seller is in a position that he has a fiduciary duty to the client), but the accredited investor line is pretty bright.

[notyoueither]

ie, me from you.

I can get to like the idea.

[KrazyHorse]

I am not a salesman. If I ever did try to sell you something I would be instantly fired and reported to the SEC, FINRA, the FSA and half a dozen other regulatory agencies.

[notyoueither]

I was replying to myself, but you interrupted my stream of multiposting. If anyone should respect the stream it should be you, I suspect.

[KrazyHorse]

You're just not quick enough.

On a political theater note, this sounds like as good an issue as any for the new republican congress to work itself into a towering frenzy over regulatory overreach on.

"And now, because of the dang regulators, the American people are being denied the opportunity to invest in a fine American business like Facebook. I don't really understand the Interweb's tubes, but I watched the movie, and it had that Justin Timberlake boy in it..."

[Dinner]

If the SEC's reach extends to American citizens living abroad then I don't see how they could reasonably claim discrimination.

That's because of your personal bias to not see it. It's like when a club said we normally don't let black people in but just this once we'll let Martin Lurther King in because he's famous. That doesn't change the fact that they are systematically discriminating against a whole group of people. Even if you don't buy the argument I bet a court would be willing to entertain it. Someone really should go fishing because they just might get a fat payout.

[KrazyHorse]

I can't decide if you're acting like an idiot on purpose or not. If the SEC did have jurisdiction, then the relevant law treating the two groups (americans living in X and everybody else living in X) would be different, and this by itself provides more than sufficient legal justification for the discriminatory treatment.

And again, US anti-discrimination laws do not reach US citizens living in other countries. Stop being daft.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

You're just not quick enough.

On a political theater note, this sounds like as good an issue as any for the new republican congress to work itself into a towering frenzy over regulatory overreach on.

"And now, because of the dang regulators, the American people are being denied the opportunity to invest in a fine American business like Facebook. I don't really understand the Interweb's tubes, but I watched the movie, and it had that Justin Timberlake boy in it..."

Yeah, god forbid that they have to actually open up their books and behave like a public company.

[KrazyHorse]

Why should they before they want to?

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Because this whole thing is an end run around the term "public".

[KrazyHorse]

It's doing a pretty good job of demonstrating the deadweight cost of regulation...

[dannubis]

On a side note, KH, would you be allowed to buy into a GS package ? Generally speaking that is...