[jacquesm]

It will just make things much worse. Without a liquid market for stocks, no matter how bad the whole economy would grind to a halt at some point. Though we're a long time away from the next IPO (by my guess) as long as there are buyers the market should stay open because that will allow a lot of entities to fulfill their obligations. If you close that avenue off there will be a severe knock-on effect from institutional investors that suddenly find themselves without liquidity. That's a scenario that I'd rather not contemplate.

The 'no buyers' scenario in fact did play out two weeks ago, there were 1.8 million shares of Shell for sale on the Amsterdam exchange without buyers. Shares to be sold without reserve, and yet, no buyers. It took a long time to fill those orders and that's why Shell did not have a price on the board during that time. Never, ever, happened before.