"one plan would be to place the burden on OTC Markets to post ALL company disclosures without conditions of fees and for OTCM to only label a company as dark when disclosures are absent, and not labelled as dark simply because a company hasn't paid their extortion fees. The SEC really needs to bring OTC Markets to heel, the heals!"
OK, with the proviso that I don't profess to be a securities lawyer and cannot recite from memory chapter and subsection of the '33 Act and the '34 Act, I'm reasonably CONfident that the SEC currently lacks the authority to impose any such CONditions on OTCM.
I am fairly CONfident that any such attempt would need enabling legislation passed by CONgress and signed by DaPrez, AND it could nott single ~OUTT OTCM AND there would be significant First Amendment issues as well, even though what OTCM does is likely CONsidered 'commercial speech' which has a lower threshold for Firsty protection.
Such would in and of itself CONstitute major regulatory overreach and thus stands no chance, IMO, of passing in our lifetimes. I would oppose it. Nott because I like OTCM, butt because anyone (including OTCM!) should be able to offer an OTCM-like service. Nobody is forcing non-registrants to use OTCM. AFAIK, OTCM has no legal authority to regulate anything - and brokers can CHOOSE to rely on OTCM flags, or nott, just as I am free to bleeve or knott the Morninstar rankings, Standard & Poors, Moody's, Barrons, Forbes, Kiplinger, or Amazing Penny Picks rankings, flags, etc.
Any such legislation affecting OTCM could easily be CONstrued to extend to iHub and our comments on pennystocks, our DD etc.
I don't want that. You ought nott want that either.
If you keep your principles correct, everything else will flow naturally - and everything will have ~OUTTcomes that some people won't like. What we ought nott do is to start regulating and legislating with regard to specific individual companies, like OTCM, who are AFAIK devoid of any governmental or other regulatory authority. What Moody's does for the bond market, OTCM does for the pennyscam market.
Shure it's tawdy. So are strip clubs (well, except for a few!), adult bookstores, massage parlors, skin magazines, porn websites, Nazi party websites (remember Skokie from yer Con Law), Faceplantbook, Tinder, Instacramm, late night infomercials (if there are still such things), violent movies (e.g., Godfather, The Irishman, Superhero movies), violent video games (Call of Duty, etc.). Everyone (in Merrika anyway) getts to have an opinion as to what they like, don't like, find obscene, or violent. In the PRC (Red China), they don't. In Iran, they don't. In Saudi Arabia they don't. In Norff Korea, they don't.
In Merrika (and I am knott claiming that you're a Merrikun), we basically have foundational principles which allow people to make their own individual choices on stuph. The opposite end of the spectrum are totalitarian countries wherein the people are merely vassals of DaState (hence called statist societies - Germany is a famous one, so is the USSR) and DaState decides what the people can talk about, think about, write about, and which enterprises will be allowed or nott and which ones will be favored by DaState and others nott.
I know our Canuckistani readers and non-Brit EUros will find this CONcept as foreign as a hamburger stand on Mars, butt that's how our rather great country was founded - on these core principles.
So, we ought nott try to stamp ~OUTT OTCM just because we don't like them or because they are ripping off pennyscammers, lest we wind up with the iHubs being similarly subject to the heavy iron fist of governmental regulation and interference - and thence the old 'regulatory capture' that leads to statist capitalism such as Germany had under the Old Baddies or the DDR.
And, if I am wronGGG about the OTCM lacking any formal regulatory or legal authority over pennystocks, I'm shure all y'all will korreck me on datt.
I haff knott hadd the Securities Law for Poets CLE course yett, so feel free to teach me. I'm here to learn (and to toss a few hand grenades at pennyscams and pennyscammers - like JUSTIN(E) COSTELLO who seems to have been getting a pass here recently).
And, of course, to feed raccoons.
AI
