But there are - as you know better than most - many ways to skin that cat.

Granted these are "frictional" costs, but to me the billions made in the last few years are not chump change. Why else have investment banks been queuing up to enter the area: and where are their profits going to come from? (apart from prime brokerage and trading off their own clients that is - Chinese Walls are full of chinks)

They ARE relatively speaking, minor compared to the overall market.

It's a similar "relational" point to that re the whole oil in Euro's / Oil Bourse conspiracy nonsense: oil dollar traffic is significant, but a relatively small, but increasing, part of general dollar traffic.

How does one define "cosmic" in other words!

Re regulation, do you think current regulators are much better placed than Maggie's/Major's?

They still have very limited access to the trading data they need: even if they get it, they have very limited competence and resources to make sense of it(since the good people are, by and large, poached by the industry) and they have limited enforcement power.

Apart from that, things are better, yes.

"Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky