Imagine what Charles Mackay, the author of 1841's Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, would think of Congress's latest "jobs bill" and, in particular, its proposal to "crowd fund" enterprises through the Internet. If we picture the mania associated with the South Sea Company, Mississippi Company and Dutch tulip bubbles combined with the power of the Web, we can probably get a pretty clear idea. Unfortunately, Mackay's seminal work doesn't appear to be on many congressional reading lists.
Last week, in what New York Times writer Jonathan Weisman called "the closest thing to a kumbaya moment Congress has seen for a while," Speaker of the House Eric Cantor released his JOBS Act with plans to bring it to the House floor for a vote this week. A package of "small company capital formation" bills, most of which have already passed the House separately, the JOBS Act would undermine market transparency, roll back important investor protections, and, if investors behave rationally, drive up the cost of capital for the small companies it purports to benefit. So naturally it has strong, bipartisan support. It is expected to sail through the House, and President Obama has made clear that he can't wait to sign it.
Although the bills making up the JOBS Act are typically described as "non-controversial," they have been severely criticized by leading securities law experts and are opposed by investor advocates and unions, among others.
In other words, these bills are "non-controversial" in precisely the same way that the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act was non-controversial when it sailed through the Senate on a 90-8 vote and the House on a 362-57 vote: They have strong support from a business community chafing at what they see as outdated regulations and from political leaders of both parties intent on ignoring warnings that the regulations being rolled back were adopted for a purpose that is still relevant today.
There's another fundamental problem with the JOBS Act. There is absolutely no reason to believe that it will produce any new jobs. As Professor Coffee pointed out in his testimony, the disappearance of small company IPOs in recent years is the result of a variety of factors that have nothing to do with the regulations targeted by the legislation and that the legislation, if adopted, will not change. This point is addressed from a different angle and even more comprehensively in a 2011 academic paper by Jay R. Ritter, Xiaohui Gao, and Zhongyan Zhu. After dispensing with the traditional "blame the regulations" explanation, the report documents a long and steady decline in the profitability of small company IPOs for investors. According to the data, while nearly three-quarters of all small company IPOs showed positive returns for investors in the early 1980s, only about a quarter of small company IPOs each year did so during the past decade. In light of that decline, which was not matched by large companies going public, they posit that "the advantages of selling out to a larger organization, which can speed a product to market and realize economies of scope, have increased relative to the benefits of remaining as an independent firm." Proposed regulatory changes are therefore unlikely to result in more small company IPOs, they conclude.
Professor Coates's testimony offers one additional point that should drive the final nail in the coffin of the deregulation-as-a-means-of-job-creation argument (but won't). Investors respond to weakened protections by demanding an increased risk premium. If Congress continues to erode the regulatory protections for investors in small and not so small companies, as the JOBS Act would do, the rational response from investors would be to drive up the cost of capital, negating and perhaps even exceeding any compliance cost savings that the legislation might produce. That will not be good for the economy.
The millions of out-of-work Americans who are victims of our last experiment with financial deregulation deserve better from their political leaders. While the House is a lost cause, the Senate still has an opportunity to turn this around. Earlier this week, Majority Leader Harry Reid responded to the JOBS Act introduction with an announcement that the Senate was moving forward with its own package of bills. The good news here is that the Majority Leader apparently does not intend to simply accept the House bill as the working text; the bad news is that the Senate appears to be headed down the same "small company capital formation" route to job creation that is unlikely to result in meaningful job growth. The question is whether, in doing so, the Senate can produce a bill that narrowly targets legitimate barriers to capital formation without taking a hatchet to vital investor protections. Unlike the House bill, that, at least, would do no harm.
Charles Mackay had it right well over a century and a half ago when he wrote in his book about financial mania: "Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one." Let's hope our senators are reading their Mackay.
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How irrationally paternalistic is it that on the one hand we are 'allowed' to go to Vegas and toss all our money out the door but we 'can't' make an investment decision with the same dollars? How crazy is it that the people who say they are fighting to protect our interests are actually fighting to repress our financial freedom.
The difference between this 'social experiment with the marketplace' and those of the past is the Internet and social media weren't part of the past. This dialog box is the exact reason why crowdfunding will weed out fraud. If this were my friend's idea page, and these were comments about his idea, you'd think twice before investing. Show me where that open dialog existed before. It hasn't and it will prove how only the good ideas get funded.
Putting it another way:
There will always be shoplifters. Is that a reason to shut down the entire mall?
[ ... if Congress is truly interested in protecting the “masses” from losing $100 or $1,000 investing in the next Google or Facebook – then where is Congress in protecting these same people from “investing” that same $100 or $1,000 in lottery tickets, Las Vegas, Atlantic City? Or from investing in dubious political campagins, for that matter.
There are indeed millions of successful companies crowdfunded by groups of unaccredited investors – they just haven’t occurred via the web, and the “crowd” has been limited to 35 investors or fewer. This method of crowdfunding is called “Friends and Family” – and has worked spectacularly for millions of startups for decades.
Crowdfunding is emerging as a powerful new way of fueling nascent innovative startups, while allowing the non-professional investor to have a piece of that glory (if not the financial returns). ]
from:
The Fallacy Against Crowdfunding
http://metapreneurship.net/2011/12/30/the-fallacy-against-crowdfunding/)
[ "If Congress is truly interested in protecting the “masses” from losing $100 or $1,000 investing in the next Google or Facebook – then where is Congress in protecting these same people from “investing” that same $100 or $1,000 in lottery tickets, Las Vegas, Atlantic City, or in dubious political campagins, for that matter.
There are indeed millions of successful companies crowdfunded by groups of unaccredited investors – they just haven’t occurred via the web, and the “crowd” has been limited to 35 investors or fewer. This method of crowdfunding is called “Friends and Family” – and has worked spectacularly for millions of startups for decades. "]
reposted from:
The Fallacy Against Crowdfunding
http://metapreneurship.net/2011/12/30/the-fallacy-against-crowdfunding/)
None of what I wrote above argues against getting money from friends and family, of course, but it does argue against the irrational exuberance that can arise when investing in anything becomes far too easy everyone.
Mr. Dick Turpin
The last comment was telling "irrational exuberance that can arise when investing in anything becomes far too easy for everyone"
We've hard the same arguments wanting to protect consumers when the internet make shopping (spending money) far to easy, paying (paypal) far too easy, even wanting hinder making publishing, journalism and even education more accessible and easier! Again. It's 2012, not 1934. And to use a cliche - the internet has changed everything (and the pervasiveness and transparency of social networks is a real game changer).
In this current economy, the SBA is useless, getting a bank loan is so improbable as to be a joke, angel investors aren't interested in a company that is intended to be a 'slow burn' company and won't be the next Facebook or Microsoft, and the SEC won't allow me to find smaller investors outside of my family (who are almost all dead, too). About our only chance in getting the funding we need (besides the lottery) is via crowdfunding financing by microinvestors. This will not only ensure our survival and prospering, but will ensure over a half dozen jobs in our community (which may not seem like much to you but a half dozen stable jobs here and a half dozen there and the next thing you know you have some real job expansion).
This change in the law NEEDS to pass... and NOW!
Before you even wrote this story did you even look at how legalized crowdfunding has worked in the UK for the last 9 months, by the way "without fraud"...
How can you say there's no proof that crowdfunding will create jobs, when you have tens of thousands of companies who can't get of the ground for lack of funding/financing options, unless you live on a different planet, you must have noticed that there is no more bank loans to new businesses, the, most SMB owners cant even get an SBA backed loan, and don't forget the credit card companies they have tightened belts since it became popular for 1/3 of Americans to file for debt-consolidation and get out of paying their debt.
Do you realize that 66%of jobs in this country come from small business, and even thought the banking mess you point as an example of deregulation had nothing to do with commercial banking (non-mortgage). The U.S. banking system has closed almost every possible source of startup capital?
And if you took the time to do your research on how crowdfunding will actually be implemented you will notice that it will most likely be run like VC and Angel groups, but with a larger groups of people and very small investments of $500 or less per company?
As for the basis for my arguments on crowd-funding, I worked on policy responses to the penny stock frauds of the 1980s and the micro-cap frauds of the 1990s. While you are doubtless right that some crowd-funding will work as you describe, I am equally doubtless that, unless appropriate investor protections are incorporated, crowd-funding will become a mecca for fraud just as the penny stock and microcap markets did, but on a bigger Internet-enabled scale.
We have an opportunity to learn from our past. While the House version of the crowd-funding bill is virtually devoid of investor protections, a Senate companion (S. 1970, Merkley-Bennet) adopts a more thoughtful approach. You and I may never agree on the ultimate benefits of crowd-funding, but we ought to be able to agree that a return to the pump-and-dump schemes of the 80s and 90s will be as harmful to the legitimate businesses that try to use this funding mechanism as it is to investors.
Lawmakers keep looking at this as traditional SECURITIES, this is a new time, a new online environment, and traditional stock exchange investors are not crowdfunding investors. People aren't putting their 401 in crowdfunding stocks, it wont work this way.
The concept here is to make it easier for those who can afford to invest (gamble) a small amount of money on cool ideas and companies, and by doing so creating new companies that would not normally be created.
There is a lot of people supporting non-equity based crowdfunding PROJECTS (not companies) on Kickstarter and IndieGoGo to the tune of 100's of millions and they are getting nothing in return, maybe a sample of the product in some cases.
If the fraud was so easy as all politician are claim it to be in "ONLINE" crowdfunding, wouldn't it be easier to launch a Kickstarter project get the money and never ship the product? In that case they haven't really even broken any laws (just ripped people off !).
Even though i truly believe crowdfunding will be a great economic impact on our country and create 100,000 of jobs it will never on every house hold's investment portfolio, this is for the few that know what crowdfunding is.
As i mentioned before look at the UK and how companies like CrowdCube.com have navigated through the rules and made it work.