The Tyrant in question here is Mayor Bloomberg, who thinks being mayor means you tell people what they can eat, where they can smoke, if they can own a handgun, when and where they can drive – and that the purpose of police is to raise revenue by handing out pointless tickets for no purpose other than raising revenue.
Part of the reason that “Occupy Wall Street” has moved beyond New York is they apparently noticed the buildings they were protesting are pretty much empty. The NYSE no longer does anything in Wall Street other than running a TV studio that resembles a trading floor. Almost all trading is now down via computer, much of that in Chicago and Germany.
One of the individual stocks I own (from when I bought stock in the 1970s in my employer’s ESOP program) notified me it is leaving Mellon Bank / BoNY as their stock transfer agent. Mellon Bank and Bank of New York were the biggest banks involved in the mundane but important business of keeping accurate records of who owns what shares of stock in a company – and in the good old days typing up the physical pieces of paper known as a Stock Certificate and voiding the old ones sent through the mail from the broker for the seller.
Well, stock records are now kept on computer. I don’t know if anyone still uses paper certificates – I tend to think not. The Stock Market had to be all in one physical place in order to exchange those pieces of paper in a timely manner. The new transfer agent is located out in the middle of Long Island, which means people who work there won’t have to go into New York City to do their work. It’s a win-win for everyone. The employees don’t have to go to the city, and Mayor Bloomberg chases yet more employment and taxpayers out of the city and making sure that his limousine doesn’t spend time getting caught in traffic on Manhattan. (I wonder if the mayor still rides the subways to get around….)
But being located on Long Island is no longer necessary either if New York State gets out of control – the transfer agent could just as easily be in Iowa or Texas or Delaware once you have no physical paper to shuffle.
The Attorney General of New York asserting authority over stock trading because it was physically taking place inside New York expedited the process of the stock business getting the hell out of New York State. Well done, Mr Cuomo. 🙂 and good luck your protest thingy with your union thug buddies.
It turns out that Mellon / Bank of New York sold their Transfer Agent business to a “global” company based in Australia called Computershare.
Broadridge is the main remaining competitor now that a foreign company controls 2/3 of the U.S. stock transfer business – Broodridge used to be a part of the company called ADP.
http://www.shareholderservicesolutions.com/201105.html