Texas poised to get own stock exchange – with less red tape than NYSE or Nasdaq
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
Which let's the Texas of Canada, Alberta, run it's own stock exchange with much looser listing requirements and security requirements. This Texas exchange will not have that advantage.
The important aspect for Alberta within the context of Canada. Is how the local regulation allows the Alberta exchange to list and provide capital to junior drillers. Small companies which raise capital using ipos to use in speculative drilling. Alberta sees this as important for their economy. To the extent it prevents Canada from having a nation SEC like singular security regulator.
With that in mind, I question how a Texas based exchange will be more than a market for lemons. Companies too sketchy for the big exchanges might be interested in listing, but no one worth investing. This contrasts with Alberta where the difference in regulation allows a unique group of companies to list.
Instead we'd expect an exchange who's selling point is less regulation, to be filled with companies who cannot pass the higher bar. A self selection of the worst companies.
But the question is: will they change their listing to this new stock market, or stay with the long-recognized ones?
its where you list that we are discussing here.
Listing on an exchange is all about what reporting requirements you are required to make inorder to be a publicly listed company and what share requirement you are required to maintain to list.
ie
- share price above a certain threshold,
- report your financials quarterly, etc.
- often a minimum trading volume
- certain requirements about the viability of the company, ie not bankrupt, etc.
Foreign companies will often dual list in the US to get access to US liquidity as well as list on their own home exchanges.
But once you are listed in the US there is no benefit to list on multiple exchanges as all you do is make your reporting requirements go up. Your shares can be traded on any US exchange once you are listed on any of htem.
But regardless of which state has the most at any given moment, even if 100% of Texas F500 companies decided to abandon their existing exchange and investor base for a more relaxed regulatory environment, that's...49 companies.
And if Tesla is a trendsetter, TX might be seeing an influx of large companies. At least for legal incorporation.
edit: another commenter points out that California reclaimed the throne in the 2024 list, released just yesterday.
As far as I can tell, there's some amount of movement to Texas for lower corporate taxes (especially companies led by executives like Musk or Ellison who prefer Texas's politics).
I would be surprised if any major companies delist from NYSE / NASDAQ in order to go all-in on a new exchange, although I could see, say, Tesla considering it if it was a condition for an attractive ticker symbol like T (NYSE symbol for AT&T, which is also headquartered in Texas).
I understand the desire for a different marketplace. But no matter where it is, they’ll still have to follow Federal securities laws, which will require some level of red tape.
Many of those companies are national or multi-national companies. For example, Exxon has its headquarters outside of Houston, but is actually incorporated in New Jersey (According to Wikipedia). So, for them, what would the benefit be?
If I were TXSE, what I'd be arguing is that the new market would have a benefit for new companies. Can you list faster with fewer requirements? Will there be capital available on the market? Can an IPO on their market be a replacement for later stage VC?
These are the companies they'd want to recruit.
Has a bill ever even existed to pass in Illinois? This idea seems to be brought up more as a scare tactic from the trading and business community than as a revenue generator from actual politicians.
Most of Ken Griffin’s work has been buying his family name on things and repeating anxieties about crime and (lack of) policing without actually providing solutions or even calling out root causes. But again, he’s not really a citizen of Chicago, nor the US. People at his level of control (his admitted price fixing, or moving trades to dark pools) have inherited and expanded on wealth to the point where they don’t need friends or social programs or infrastructure to live out 90 years on the planet.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/303696/us-fortune-500-co...
I think the economic growth of Texas is great for the US. States trying different models of regulation is a good way to test what works.
California has 57
New York and Texas are at 52
Source: https://www.gov.ca.gov/2024/06/04/icymi-california-is-now-ho...
As an aside, I do find it still impressive given the number of high profile companies that relocated, and the fact that there’s a constant news doom agenda against California.
All this to say, it’s a healthy reminder of just how much California matters to the US and global economy
One point of note, there hasn't been an Alberta stock exchange since 1999. The Toronto stock exchange bought the Vancouver, Alberta and small cap option market form Montreal and merged them into one stock exchange called the Toronto Venture stock exchange.
Its head quarters are in Calgary but its computer are located in Ontario and its under IIROC supervision and rules. And the BC and Alberta government co regulate it but their securities commission rules aren't what's followed, its the IIROC rules that apply.
Which of course was from Calgary.
But, agreed, that stock was a wild ride while it lasted!!
Ah yes, SNC-Lavalin and fraud, name a more iconic duo.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/snc-lavalin-trading-...
This is exactly how it will end up being used for. Companies that are listed as OTC (over the counter) or “pink sheets” are most certainly dog shit; and often subjected to pump and dump schemes. The TXSE will be no different especially with reported “fewer regulations” than NASDAQ or NYSE.
This is great news for grifters. The average retail investor will likely end up getting shafted.
Now, if you're a less than reputable business, with questionable earnings and a disregard for following the rules, and you are ineligible to be listed on the NYSE or NASDAQ, which exchange are you going to consider?
Also, not being listed on NYSE or NASDAQ doesn't mean you're any less of a reputable company. There's some real shit listed on both.
Note that this is because of constitution reasons and areas of responsibility:
* https://www.canada.ca/en/intergovernmental-affairs/services/...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalism
Every so often there's talk about consolidating things to a single SEC-like entity, but it has not happened at this point:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_securities_regulation
When the “overbearing regulatory regime” represents said company shareholders interests, you move to Texas where the MAGA vision of freedom reigns.
We have to thank Musk, even if he does crazy things. It is thanks to his crazyness that we have Tesla and SpaceX.
Without Musk EVs would be nowhere and NASA and ESA would still be the laggard they are with reusable launchers absolutely nowhere to be found.
It's way too easy to say: "I want all the good side of capitalism (like wealth and science advances) but none of the bad sides".
Starlink too btw.
He feeds off negative attention and actively seeks it out.
Laurene Powell Jobs?
Lisa Brennan-Jobs?
Liza Powel O'Brien?
There is no way to prove this without having the ability to observe all the other universes that have Musk and that don't have Musk. It's very likely if he didn't build these companies, someone else, or multiple someones, would have built similar companies.
The increasing amounts of envy and malice in American culture is troubling.
Aside from everything?!
I’ll bite.
1) He’s an individual yet his wealth surpasses the GDP of entire nations.
2) The market caps of his companies that informs that wealth are wildly and recklessly speculative. The company that innovated in its space is worth 1/3 of the company that has consistently oversold or completely failed to make good on promises(which frankly they all do regardless of their innovative effect).
3) And still, he’s currently holding one of his companies for ransom for even more.
> He built companies that provide breakthrough goods and services.
I must have misunderstood why his companies hired all of those employees.
Were they all just there cheering him on as he built it all himself?
This is a pretty absurd idea. The Tesla Model S, the Nissan Leaf, and the Renault Z-E platform (initially with a pretty unsuccessful car built on it; the successful Renault Zoe came the year after) all came out within a year of each other. The VW e-Golf came out the year after. You can thank progress in lithium ion batteries hitting a tipping point, not Musk, coupled with government incentives (California, the EU, and China were all pretty much saying to manufacturers "make this, and we will subsidise it").
I can see why people might think this, particularly Americans, because the Tesla Model 3 was arguably the first mainstream/affordable electric car _in America_ (the Leaf and similar vehicles never really caught on there; they're too far outside market preferences), but the idea that Tesla in some way made electric cars possible is simply nonsense.
There is a non-trivial market for speculating on garbage.
If you're Texas, why not go for it?
If you're New York, it's not worth damaging your reputation.
So another place to buy penny stocks and other micro-cap garbage, great!
Assuming the founders of this exchange are smart people who worked out how to exploit other people's stupid ideologies, they are smart and will make a lot of money, like the people writing the Ponzi scheme coins.
Surely the biggest financial institutions in the country are opening a low-regulation exchange for the betterment of the public, right?
Seems like they are making it easier for them to cash out their investments with less scrutiny.
Deregulation of power grids (which has been done throughout the US, not only in Texas) isn't the same as removing red tape in financial reporting. It's about removing oversight of large, vertically-integrated utilities by fostering competition of unintegrated market participants.
Deregulating power grids has been such a success for flexibility and renewable energy integration that the European Union codified it into law in 2019.
Is it working perfectly in Texas? Absolutely not. Is it an example of utter failure of "deregulation"? Absolutely not!
My issue is, "deregulation of electricity markets" means "unbundling vertically-integrated utilities", not "removing oversight". This Texas Stock Exchange is about removing oversight.
[0]: https://apnews.com/ferc-jpmorgan-owes-410m-for-price-manipul...
I’m curious what other companies you’re thinking of when you say “like many others”, because all of the ones I can think of have moved significant parts of their operations to Texas.
I just wish Texas cared about individual freedom as much as they do corporate freedom.
As in "Texas's future is bright because of past performance", which is just an assumption that doesn't take a lot into account, like harsh weather patterns, weak infrastructure, and living in texas.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/infrastruct...
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...
Texas also recently announced a program to build a series of distributed small nuclear reactors around the state which is cool.
https://www.texastribune.org/2024/03/27/texas-small-nuclear-...
No they aren’t. They’re often repeated, but they aren’t true.
Texas had a catastrophic “grid failure” in 2021. It hasn’t had any actual issues since. There have been no power outages due to “grid failure” since that one event. The past couple winters and summers have seen several situations where the grid operators have issued warnings, but these warnings are completely normal and are part of the process to inform power producers to not go offline, etc. In software terms, it’s basically the equivalent of “it’s going to be a busy day today, try to avoid doing any deployments to prod unless they’re really necessary”.
Just like the train derailments last year, and the airplane issues this year, the media loves to use the fervor around a single bad event to then create big headlines about every similar event.
Back to the software example, imagine if every big shopping holiday there was an CNN headline of “Amazon told its developers they cannot deploy to prod today. Amazon is worried about an outage!!” And because the layperson doesn’t know any better, they fall for it. But in reality, it was business as usual.
Do other states regularly have multi-day outages that impacts hundreds of thousands of people? I know California has at times with wildfires, but other than that? Are these issues below the line for being considered "systemic"? I'm actually asking, not refuting using question marks.
And yes, other states have this problem as well. See https://poweroutage.us/about/majorevents.
I've seen the headlines, I was asking for clarification on what made those different. I do think "storm preparedness" is not a category that should be excluded from consideration given their occurrence is also systemic (and may increase due to climate change), but I'm also open to how these outages differ from more systemic outages. The difference that makes sense to me is that federal regulations - the topic at play here - wouldn't have impacted these situations at all. Makes sense.
No, but perhaps you can have better plans for responding to such events, different staffing practices, temporary measures of some sort, etc.
Yes: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_Hurricane_Sandy_i...
Sandy was relatively weak when it hit the East Coast. Most Texans wouldn't blink an eye at a category 1 with 80 MPH winds. That's the same wind speeds as the storm that hit Texas a few weeks ago and knocked power out.
Minutes of Power Outages: The number of minutes of power outages the average customer experiences in a year, excluding major events. (U.S. Energy Information Administration; 2022).
The Texas grid is better compared to a third world country. It works great except when there is an emergency or any sort of edge case. Reliability numbers miss the context of a transmission line failing when it is 68 degrees and sunny vs a natural gas line freezing up when its -7 and everyone needs electricity to not die.
Pricing is handled exactly the same way: its $0.12/kWh when things are normal, but jumps to $7.00/kWh as soon as there is an emergency. Normal states split the difference and charge something like $0.14/kWh all the time so that when you're forced to run your heater 24/7 to stay alive you don't have to sell your car to pay your power bill.
In fact power in Texas is cheaper on average than many other places in the US (including NYC, where I live). This is partially because Texas is the energy center of the US, with abundant wind, solar, and oil/gas.
The Texas grid is the opposite of a third-world country. The engineering and operations groups at ERCOT are extremely competent, even if the PUCT sometimes forces them to make stupid decisions.
Yes, everything is fine if you have money and can choose. Other states explicitly ban these types of pricing models because they are predatory and can result in the people who are most price sensitive ending up in financial ruin.
I have no doubt that ERCOT has some good people working there. At the macro level however Texas makes isolationist decisions like not engaging in interstate energy sales agreements because they would subject the energy industry in the state to more federal regulation.
You might be interested in reading the final report of the 2011 incident, where ERCOT agreed that having appropriate capacity to the Eastern and Western interconnects would have mitigated most of the problems. https://www.ferc.gov/sites/default/files/2020-05/Reportonthe...
With fixed rate you are on a 6-36 month contract where your rate is fixed typically around the $0.12/kWh you mentioned above.
Variable rate plans change the rate month to month but has never been near the $7.00/kWh you're claiming https://shellenergy.com/Historical-Rates
Griddy was the company that hit the headlines who sold at live wholesale prices as you used electricity had 29k customers and is not how the typical electric company in Texas works https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griddy_(company)
Yes, most sane well regulated places don't allow things like this to exist in the first place.
The pricing scheme you describe was true for a company that no longer exists, for a type of pricing that is no longer allowed. The number of customers were in the minority.
In fact hundreds of thousands of Houstonians lost power for extended periods just last month.
What? I'm also a lifelong Texan and have experienced rolling blackouts once: during 2021.
> In fact hundreds of thousands of Houstonians lost power for extended periods just last month.
You mean after a massive storm with 100 mph winds destroyed infrastructure and flooded the city?
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/18/weather/houston-storms-power-...
To some degree, saying "As a life long Texan" then trying to generalize the "Texas Experience" to be your own is as incorrect as saying "As an American, there are mountains everywhere and it's green and beautiful".
I've said a lot of negative stuff in the past about the Wall Street banks, and I have come to regret most of it after learning a lot more about finance. Stocks absolutely can be a way for the "rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer", and of course the traditional exchanges aren't a vaccine against that, but I do think that they do some level of vetting to make sure that companies aren't just Ponzi schemes.
I mean, for example, WeWork had its IPO rejected in 2019 because regulators were afraid about its business model, and it only ever went public through a SPAC loophole. Clearly they shouldn't have gone public at all, but some basic sanity checking is better than zero.
To be clear, I'm totally onboard with Texas making their own exchange if they can actually do it better, or at least as-well. Competition is a good thing.
Ironically, the more I learned about finance, the more I disparage it. I worked (actually) on Wall Street back when it wasn't a strip mall. It's just a casino for the vast majority of people that call themselves investors.
I do think that option contracts might be evil and a glorified casino though. It feels like they kind of end up with a means of really really rich people to extract money out of poorer people without those people actually gaining anything back; since options are (as far as I'm aware) a binary "make money or lose your entire investment" situation, and each transaction requires a winner and a loser, it definitely is very analogous to a casino.
I do call myself an "investor", but 95% of all the money I have in the market is in low-risk ETFs (VOO and VTI), which I don't think is gambling.
[1] Well, they might still be evil but I think it's a necessary evil in order to put downward pressure on the market to avoid ponzinomics.
But it's not always a good reason.
I guess you could get even more conservative and assume that the absence of a law is also intentional and we should maintain the status quo forever. I'd argue that even that would be preferable to a system where you can only add restrictions.
But if we're going to stick with it, it's very likely the fence will still work for its purpose if you remove some of the pickets. But to figure out which ones, and how many, you need to have a clear conception of the fencemaker's goal and how it currently accomplishes them or fails to. The significance of any specific part isn't a sound basis for an argument about the purpose or usefulness of the fence per se.
But, for context, all I was trying to do when I accidentally started this whole side tangent was suggest that unbounded speculation that isn't tied to concrete, specific things is unlikely to be fruitful.
As far as I can tell, the only specific thing that's been mentioned is not having an equivalent to NASDAQ's board diversity rule. Which doesn't seem like a _huge_ differentiator given that NYSE doesn't have one either?
TBH though my first instinct is to say that I doubt their rules will be egregious, and in a market as large as the USA having a third national stock exchange probably wouldn't be a terrible thing. Markets generally benefit from healthy competition, even when some of the individual competitors aren't everybody's favorite.
It doesn't mean anything to talk about reducing regulations without being specific about which rules you actually have an issue with, but it can provide the illusion of consensus.
Like we could both talk about healthcare and say that healthcare is too regulated in the US and that we should reduce the regulations! This a broadly agreeable position! But if I'm thinking of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_of_need and you're thinking of the ACA cap on insurance profits (Medical Loss Ratio https://content.naic.org/cipr-topics/medical-loss-ratio#:~:t...), then we didn't actually agree on anything, did we?
I mean, you agreed on something, which is the bloat of a system, you just disagree on the "how to fix it" part.
If I said "We need a crane that can lift 3000lbs" and you agree, and you come up with a design that uses an electric motor system, and I come up with a design that uses a diesel engine, we still agreed on something, just not the implementation of how to do it.
I realize it's not a perfect analogy, but if you and I could agree on some bad consequence of "too many regulations" (e.g. the prices of healthcare are too high as a result of the regulations), that is some common ground. The question then comes down "which regulations would be best to cut to lower costs?" and reduces to an optimization problem.
Unfortunately, the "how to fix it" part is the part that requires building political consensus. Getting agreement on X being too expensive is easy; everyone always wants everything to be cheaper.
> If I said "We need a crane that can lift 3000lbs" and you agree, and you come up with a design that uses an electric motor system, and I come up with a design that uses a diesel engine, we still agreed on something, just not the implementation of how to do it.
> I realize it's not a perfect analogy, but if you and I could agree on some bad consequence of "too many regulations" (e.g. the prices of healthcare are too high as a result of the regulations), that is some common ground. The question then comes down "which regulations would be best to cut to lower costs?" and reduces to an optimization problem.
The problem I have is that using "too many regulations" as the foundation is inevitably doomed. Lets say we find some collection of regulations that could be cut. Well, any solution is going to, at a glance, look like an additional regulation to the layman. And that's before the parasites that are profiting from the existing inefficiencies start spinning narratives about how this is another government overreach and how we're killing America.
But by all means, tear down all these fences without understanding why they exist. They can just be rebuilt after all, and it's not like wolves will eat all of us and our livestock in the meantime.
This assumes that the rules created themselves out of thin air and we never lived without them. In most cases, existing rules/regulations were created in response to events that proved their necessity.
And self-regulation is one of the cases where you can be pretty sure that the rule makers are intrinsically motivated to consider the downsides as well as the upsides.
It's entirely possible that they can, I'm not claiming that NYSE is perfect or anything, but in my years on this earth something has become abundantly clear to me: if there's an "obvious" solution to something, and no one is doing it, then there's probably a pretty decent reason and you're not a genius for thinking it.
The easiest example that comes to mind is the stainless steel frame of the Cybertruck that doesn't crumple, which sounds like an "obvious" good thing (no one really wants their car to break in a crash), until you realize that that drastically reduces the safety of the vehicle because a lot more of the shock transfers to the passenger, and the other mainstream car producers were already well aware of that.
Entirely possible that I'll agree with the changes, though what I'm more worried about is it becoming some vague "culture war" bullshit about wokeness or something, as seems to be the only talking point being brought up in traditionally-conservative states now.
We need a specific instance of red tape to have a debate about it. However the above questions will get you started in the debate.
Loosing rules is a way to figure out is a new rule set is more appropriate.
I had previously kind of bought into the cryptocurrency crap about how "bloated" and "draconian" the banking system in the US was, and that's an easy narrative to fall into...the ACH standard is 800+ pages long! Surely us genius software engineers can do better than all these dumb financial regulators.
But as I read through the standard (I'll admit I mostly skimmed, 800 pages of dry financial text isn't exactly exhilarating stuff), I learned that, actually, most of these rules are actually pretty reasonable. It turns out that sending money between people is actually a pretty complicated thing, with tons of edge cases that you have to consider (e.g. How do you deal with fraudulent transactions? How do you deal with situations where you send money to a dozen accounts but one of the account numbers is wrong? Which transactions need to be reversible? etc.).
Definitely having a "why" attached to every single regulation could be helpful. I'm not going to claim that every regulation associated with finance is (still) necessary, but it's rarely as cut and dry as it initially seems.
Look at crypto. That's literally a system with very little """red tape""" and it's nothing more than a breeding ground for fraudulent investments because the company that promises 10% but literally cannot deliver will always beat out the companies that promise 4% but can mostly safely deliver that. If there's no punishment for lying, honest companies are at a disadvantage, because a market is not a transparent system, you cannot know the internal workings of a company that isn't required to make that info public.
https://www.businessinsider.com/nasdaq-board-diversity-sec-p...
Assuming the backers can attract capital to this new market, then I can see a win for companies who list here and then move to the majors if their capital needs exceed what this market can provide.
Most companies listed on NYSE/Nasdaq are not incorporated in NY so I'm not sure what the appeal here is.
> Lee said that the TXSE would be apolitical, but its proposed launch comes at a time when right-wing culture warriors have taken aim at mainstream financial markets.
I'm calling it now. While I hope that TXSE ends up on the same level of NYSE/Nasdaq, I feel like the major appeal of TXSE will be ideological and it will end up gobbling up "culture war" companies doing IPO's/SPAC's. This will be the place where the likes to Truth Social, Rumble and other companies will be listed and it has mostly to do with it being in bright red Texas while the other two are in bright blue NY.
You can see the politicization and cultural rot from the outside clearly, considering NASDAQ has a DEI page: https://www.nasdaq.com/about/diversity-equity-inclusion
https://www.businessinsider.com/kansas-is-using-sex-toys-to-...
The Civil War made it pretty clear that states cannot leave the union, and doing so would probably be treated as an act of war, and while Texas does have a pretty impressive economy, it's still not enough to take on the entire rest of the United States.
I lived in Texas for awhile, and there is this sort of running idea that Texas is somehow able to be self-sufficient in a way that other states cannot be. I think I dispute that.
I am sure there lots of people in Texas, California, etc. that think they'd be better off as their own states. Its the same logic as Brexit and its hard for elites to take it seriously because it is so obviously dumb. But the benefits are so poorly spread around there are just a lot of people who don't care. "I will still get my pension." "This town was dying before." etc.
She might still say this stuff, I don't know, I haven't talked to her in like 7 years.
The hypocritical potential of humans is incredible.
These people in general had jobs working for the state or local government. But they were very sure in their views about the economy. My point is that they also didn't really directly benefit much from tech, or international trade, or global finance. So they really didn't have a big stake in being right or wrong.
> My point is that they also didn't really directly benefit much from tech, or international trade, or global finance. So they really didn't have a big stake in being right or wrong.
I mean, they have some stake though; presumably most of them have a 401k or some equivalent if they have government jobs, which probably invests in a diversified S&P500 fund or something similar, and most of the biggest businesses in those are tech companies. They should care a little about those business; their retirements probably depend on them.
The world is filled with states similar in size to Texas (or smaller), by whatever measurement you want to use, all of which seem perfectly self-sufficient. Even those in Europe didn't join the EU out of concerns about self-sufficiency, but rather about efficiency and synergy.
I see no reason why Texas would be different in this regard. It might be unwise for Texas to attempt such, as there are benefits to remaining, but the idea that it couldn't be is nothing short of absurd. For the record, I don't think this opinion is unique to Texas, most of the other states in the US could do so just as well.
I mostly think Texas would not be able to win a civil war against the US, and so splitting off would be impossible. If they were somehow able to convince the federal government to let them secede, I think they'd probably survive, though I also think it would be a downgrade to Texas citizens.
ETA: Rereading your comment, I actually don't think we really disagree on anything here, I just chose some poor wording making what I said ambiguous.
Oh. I'll do you one better then. Texas is uniquely unqualified to be self-sufficient. They tried it once and went bankrupt in 10 years.
> I mostly think Texas would not be able to win a civil war against the US,
I don't know why one would or should be fought. The people who think that the US has the right to prevent secession are pretty weird... ask them if they think divorce should be illegal or if the husband should be allowed to murder a wife who tries.
In fairness, a lot can change in 100+ years. Texas has much better utilization of its resources with a much higher population now than it did the last time they were independent. It's possible that they'd do better now.
> I don't know why one would or should be fought. The people who think that the US has the right to prevent secession are pretty weird
It might be weird but wasn't that the conclusion of the US Civil War? I very highly doubt that the fed woudl let Texas secede without a fight.
> I very highly doubt that the fed woudl let Texas secede without a fight.
Sure. And I would expect the fight to be litigative, or even diplomatic in nature. But martial? Though, I will say I keep forgetting how bloodthirsty the typical person is, and how few socially approved avenues they have to engage in that mindset. So who knows.
Except there's more than one state that would probably side with Texas out of culture war spite.
Also, we just so happen to have the majority of military manufacturing located in said states because defense contractors spent decades relocating for that sweet savings on taxes.
> we just so happen to have the majority of military manufacturing located in said states because defense contractors spent decades relocating for that sweet savings on taxes.
Most of the financing for these companies is funded by the US military. I doubt Texas (or Texas and the few surrounding states that also left) would be able to maintain the nearly infinite military budget that the fed has, and the military manufacturers would move to a Union state as soon as possible. I guess the physical factories would still be there, but there's a lot more to manufacturing than just the factories.
They can deregulate everything, roll the dice and enjoy the flaky electric grid, fire ants, modified AR-15s, tornadoes, floods, etc. They can do whatever they want with their new southern border and we can do the same in turn.
But 'red-tape' is also what people call the rules that are effective, but prevent them from doing something nefarious that would be profitable.
'Red-Tape' = 'stopping me from doing something bad but would make me money, thus is taking away my freeeeeeeedooaaammmm'.
'Red-Tape' can also be non-productive rules that just hinder progress, but that isn't usually what is meant.
You have no way of knowing one way or another.
It is all about profit. The environment, or safety, anything in the way of profit is called '"red-tape" and is put there by some do-gooder.
So, yes, I think I can infer when someone talks about getting rid of 'red-tape' what they are "meaning". But that is also why I listed several categories of red-tape, since some 'red-tape' should be updated.
>Some GOP members have called for funds to pull their money out of BlackRock because of its environmental, social, and governance policies.
The same BlackRock that is investing heavily, along side Citadel, in this new stock exchange, mind you.
PS: There are so many shitty comments in this thread adding nothing of value. So you don't like Texas and have different political views. Fuck off. Some of us actually want to discuss this.
Texas produces more electricity than any other state, in fact more than 2x as much as the 2nd place state: https://www.eia.gov/state/analysis.php?sid=TX (ctr+f for 'Texas produces more electricity than any other state')
Texas is the #1 producer of renewable energy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_renewab...
Texas's energy position is enviable, and shows a state leveraging its natural advantages rather than coasting on them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/03/01/chapter-313-texas-re...
In NY, NIMBYs block basically everything and it's both political parties.
What planet does he come from and what are they smoking? Texas is about as conservative as it gets. Even our Democrats are somewhat to the right of center. This will not end well; more money means more influence and Texas will become a client state and puppet of billionaires.
Maybe we should rename ourselves The Kingdom of Texas.
tl;dr - Where stock is traded is _largely_ irrelevant due to how exchanges are regulated; the interesting thing is where it's listed. The last attempt at a 'CEO friendly' exchange, LTSE, has been around for five years. Two companies are listed on it.
Good luck with that.
The story of the red tape is that every time somebody does something stupid or malicious, there is some red tape added so that future investors face less trading risk.
Risk == cost
So less red tape needs to be translated to investors facing potentially higher risk on their transactions of various stupid or malicious shit others can pull on them.
For example, Trump Media would have never been possible just a few years ago, but now we have SPACs - a legal fraud scheme, so we don't really need Texas for that, but go ahead, have fun with a "wild west" exchange. It's not going to go sideways, no no.
https://www.villanovalawreview.com/post/1691-spac-to-reality...
"SPACs are not new and have existed for decades, in which they were historically used by small companies that had trouble raising capital on the open market via IPOs. However, in recent years, fueled by the market volatility following the Covid-19 pandemic, SPACs have become more mainstream."
So, yes, while LEGALLY an SPAC could have existed a few years ago, investors never really seriously considered them as a safe investment.
There is a saying that "regulations are written in blood". That's not a good way to write regulations. They end up being haphazard, both too strong and not strong enough. People rightly get frustrated at the patchwork. It's tempting to apply the experience and create a new, better set of regulations from a clean sheet.
But unfortunately, the loudest voices are usually the ones who are well aware of the price already paid in blood, and want to be the ones to get another dose of it. They will design the rules so that it's not their blood, but will take advantage of the blood of others until it gets banned all over again. The hard way, again.
Good luck, Texas. You'll quickly find that regulations are in place for a reason.
The Confederacy claimed that the US Government had broken the 'compact' that the states had agreed to in order to join the union when they abolished slavery - so their justification for secession under these dubious legal theories was called the "compact theory" -- it's no accident that after that most recent SC ruling, Texas's governor was out there saying that the US Government had broken the compact between the Federal government and the states. He then issued a series of unconstitutional orders daring the Federal government to stop him;
https://gov.texas.gov/uploads/files/press/Border_Statement_1...
It wasn't an overt threat to secede (though many in his party do make that specific threat) but it was an obvious nod to where they think this will end up if they don't get their way.
That's how secessions/federal disintegrations generally work, just look at the USSR post-1991.
And I also see this move as a potential further step towards Texas's devolution from the government in DC, who's going to stop them once they'll decide to "pass the Rubicon" for good?
Yeah, it might be, but think of it this way - if Texas said "we're independent, and all the military installations and research facilities are now ours" I have a strong suspicion the US government might say "yeah, no, that's not happening". The likes of Lockheed Martin and other major AF/Army/Navy contractors have production and research facilities in the DFW area. Texas goes independent, that's a lot of stuff in those facilities that the USA wouldn't want an openly hostile neighbor to have.
The Smithsonian claims it might be legal if Texas hews to its original agreement to break into five states if they did secede. [2] Of course the trolls are ignoring that since it doesn't appeal to anyone's pride to break up into the state of Dallas, Houston, etc. It would also undermine the alleged conservative vision for a pure red state since Texas metro areas trend purple to blue.
Texas actually breaking into five states that remain would be bitterly fought against since it would dramatically raise the number of House and Senate seats and shift the balance of power.
[1] https://www.texastribune.org/2021/01/29/texas-secession/
[2] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/more-150-years-texas-...
Legal implies some authority over both parties, that they have agreed to some common rules.
If you are succeeding, you are no longer bound by the laws of the original country, you are your own country with own laws. And then you can just make some new laws to make it 'legal'.
North Austin, East Austin, South Austin, West Austin, and Greater Texas.
Texas independence can't come soon enough!
I'm not saying that they couldn't do it, I'm just curious to how much that actually messes with the numbers, and moreover I haven't really seen any compelling evidence that Texas being part of the USA has held them back.
Federal money doesn't grow on a tree in D.C.--it comes from taxpayers in the several states! So while it's true that the Federal government would stop paying for these things, it's also true that Texans would stop paying Federal taxes. With this in mind, it's clear that Texas could easily afford to assume any and all federal obligations by replacing federal taxes with their own equivalent taxes.
I've heard it said that Texas is a net recipient of Federal dollars, but only by 1-2%. Given that Texans will likely want a signaficantly smaller government, this can easily be covered via spending cuts.
> I haven't really seen any compelling evidence that Texas being part of the USA has held them back.
Texans are subject to federal law, which is regularly dicated to us by people from thousands of miles away, with whom we have little in common. If that's not being 'held back', what is?
Sure, I'm not saying it's impossible, what I'm taking potential issue how accurate the numbers you provided are since it's possible that the reason that Texas has such a successful economy is because they're not directly paying for everything.
I could be wrong, I'm not asserting anything, I'm just pointing out a potential confounding variable.
> Texans are subject to federal law, which is regularly dicated to us by people from thousands of miles away, with whom we have little in common. If that's not being 'held back', what is?
That's true of literally every state, so it's really not a Texas-specific problem.
Which specific federal laws do you think are hindering Texas, outside of some vague notion that people in New York and DC "have little in common with you"? I'm not saying there aren't any, I'm actually curious, but this always seems like a sticking point that would come up when I lived in Texas and people would talk about the virtues of secession.
I guess you could argue "gun laws", but even with that the US federal government offers considerable leeway to the states to handle that already.
It's not clear to me what you're saying here. What aren't we paying for?
> That's true of literally every state, so it's really not a Texas-specific problem.
It's not only true of every state, it's generally true of every breakaway region ever, in all of history! This commonality isn't an argument against Texas secession, it's an argument for local governance.
> Which specific federal laws do you think are hindering Texas, outside of some vague notion that people in New York and DC "have little in common with you"?
Things that are hindering Texas: > The sheer size of the federal union. It waters down our representation, reduces the feasibility of grassroots movements, and increases the power of mass media at the expense of the people. > All laws that infringe on the 2nd amendment. > All laws (or lack thereof) which permit government to infringe on the 1st amendment, or encourage private institutions to do the same. > All laws that empower the Feds to infringe on the 4th amendment (Patriot Act, etc), or to circumvent it (by buying data to spy on citizens without a warrant). > Federal control of our border, which they refuse to protect and which is irrevocably changing Texas demographics and politics, against the will of Texans. > The federal tax code, which is as much a progressive welfare program (see "refundable tax credits") as a revenue stream. > The federal bureaucracy in general, which is designed to provide jobs rather than serve the citizenry. > All laws which the Feds use to force state action, on threat of withholding state money (see Medicaid expansion, drinking age laws, etc). By withholding our own tax dollars as leverage, the Feds are, by definition, acting against state interests. > The high level of funding of the US military, which provides negligible benefit (beyond policing the seas), constantly gets us dragged into conflicts around the world and heightens the risk of WWIII. > The huge, ungainly, esoteric body of petty laws, which drive up the cost of business while adding negligible value, if any.
The biggest issue of of all is that Texans no longer have faith in the ability of the Constitution to constrain the power of the Federal government. We no longer see the federal government as the guarantor of our natural human rights. We see it as the single greatest threat to them.
> China and Russia dream of this happening.
Here I was thinking that Texans should strive for a government that best represents their values and protects the liberties they care about. Thank you for reminding me about what really matters--standing up to our common enemy--Eastsasia! Or was it Oceania?