Sadly, the answer to most of your questions is no. The fat cats continue to have a license to steal and neither the congress or current regulatory groups seem inclined to do anything about it. I don't think it was a coincidence the SEC eliminated the uptick rule. Nor do I think it is a coincidence they are dragging their feet now about replacing it and are hoping, if anything, to replace it with an even less effective version.

My greatest disappointment with the Obama administration has been the absence so far of any new securities laws when it is blatantly obvious that massive abuses have taken place. The perpetrators that unethically or illegally took millions and billions of investors money continue to hold that dirty money while the entire country and world suffer the consequences of their individual greed.

One need look no further than the Madoff case to see the SEC had no interest in seriously fighting crime and fraud on Wall Street even when the flagrant evidence was provided to them in detail repeatedly over a number of years.

IMO, the greatest abusers are hedge funds. They are not that much smarter than anyone else on Wall Street, they just have enough capital and freedom from punishment to manipulate the markets pretty much at their own will. The theory that they didn't need regulation since they catered only to wealthy, sophisticated investors ignored the potential for market damage that would hurt all investors which is exactly the harm that they wrought. The only reason many of them got hurt recently is they too became victims of even bigger or more creative manipulators. There clearly has been no honor among the hedge fund thieves even relative to each other.