SEC Wants Everyone to Be a Bond Trader

If you want to buy a bond, one thing you can do is, you call up your bond dealer and say, "I want to buy Bond X, how much is it?" and the dealer says, "let me see ... that'll be 98.75," and if you still want the bond you pay him 98.75. This is how essentially all commerce in the non-financial world works, so it is a straightforward model. But it works poorly if your dealer isn't trustworthy, and the whole history of the universe is mostly one long demonstration that your dealer isn't trustworthy.