[bsanr2]

This argument is equivalent to supporting the IRS going after small-time tax cheats because the big boys - with billions in public revenue lost by their fraud every year - are "too difficult" to prosecute.

Regulators exist to prevent the most dire threats to a system - the system being the American economy, not simply financial markets (and their profits). They should act like it.

If a crisis manufactured by Wall Street hubris and capitalized upon by retail traders functionally crashes the system by way of a massive wealth transfer, so be it. Regulators should be concerned with the setting up of the earthshaking domino set in the first place, not with taking a chainsaw to the hand that goes to knock everything over.

[codecamper]

Not really.

It's about removing leverage from the system.