How Trump's Project 2025 will affect investors: the SEC 

From page 831:

Eliminate all administrative proceedings (APs) within the SEC except

for stop orders related to defective registration statements. The SEC

enforcement system does not need to have both district court cases and

APs. Alternatively, respondents should be allowed to elect whether an

adjudication occurs in the SEC’s administrative law court or an ordinary

Article III federal court.24 

End the practice of delegating the decision to initiate an enforcement case.

The SEC Chairman—and possibly the U.S. Government Accountability

Office (GAO)—should study whether other Commission delegation of

authority to staff should be narrowed and whether sunsetting of such

delegation of authority should be required. 

Obviously this is all calculated to weaken the SEC's ability to protect investors and call to account bad actors. Just what you would expect from a serial bankrupt like Trump.

PDF of the complete text of Project 2025  

What are Project 2025’s ties to the Trump campaign? 

 How Trump's Project 2025 will affect investors: Consolidated Audit Trail 

From page 831:

Terminate the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) program.

From the SEC:  

Rule 613 (Consolidated Audit Trail)

The Commission adopted Rule 613 to create a comprehensive consolidated audit trail that would allow regulators to efficiently and accurately track all activity throughout the U.S. markets in National Market System (NMS) securities. Among other things, the rule requires the self-regulatory organizations (SROs) to jointly submit a plan – called an NMS plan – to create, implement and maintain a consolidated audit trail. The rule specifies the type of data to be collected and when the data is to be reported to a central repository.

Clearly the CAT program enables auditors to determine what is actually going on in a company. Given his many bankruptcies it is not difficult to understand why Trump and the people around him would not like this program, but it is a good thing for investors. 

How Trump's Project 2025 will affect investors: PCAOB and FINRA 

From page 830: 

To reduce costs and improve transparency, due process, congressional oversight, and responsiveness, PCAOB and FINRA should be abolished, and their regulatory functions should be merged into the SEC.   

 What Is the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB)?

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) is a non-profit organization that regulates auditors of publicly traded companies. The purpose of PCAOB is to minimize audit risk. In particular, the PCAOB oversees the audits of public companies, brokers, and dealers registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) is a non-profit organization that regulates audits of publicly traded companies to minimize audit risk.

The PCAOB was established at the same time as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 to address the accounting scandals of the late 1990s.

The board protects investors and other stakeholders of public companies by ensuring that auditors follow strict guidelines. 

What Is the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA)?

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is an independent, nongovernmental organization that writes and enforces the rules governing registered brokers and broker-dealer firms in the United States.

Its stated mission is "to safeguard the investing public against fraud and bad practices." It is considered a self-regulatory organization.

FINRA was created as the result of the consolidation of the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) and the member regulation, enforcement, and arbitration operations of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in 2007. The consolidation was meant to do away with overlapping or redundant regulation and reduce the cost and complexity of compliance. 

Clearly these organizations were created in the aftermath of financial crashes to protect investors. Like so much from Trump's Project 2025, this is ill advised.

PDF of the complete text of Project 2025  

What are Project 2025’s ties to the Trump campaign? 

Alice Marshall reads Trump's Project 2025 so you don't have to

I will be writing a series of posts on how Trump's Project 2025 affects investors, business, technology and science. I will be going into detail with page numbers for the benefit of those who share my fascination with this sort of information.

Precinct captiain's guide to political victory

I wrote a book, you should read it, it will save America.
The precinct captain's guide to political victory

Bringing a single payer healthcare system to DC

I have retired from PR and have decided to work full time to bring a single payer healthcare system to DC. Under Obama's Affordable Care Act states, including DC, can create their own single payer systems. Such a system would save DC taxpayers millions or dollars in addition to guaranteeing healthcare to every DC resident. It is cheaper for the entire city to self insure itself that pay millions of dollars to private health insurance companies in addition to contracting with providers. It would save residents of DC millions of dollars to pay a reasonable healthcare tax, such as Canadians do, rather than extortionate health insurance premiums. Follow my work at Alice Marshall on Medium. Contact me at marshall@prestovivace.biz if you would like to help.

Visit us at our new address

Presto Vivace Blog has moved, it is now part of our corporate site.

How Twitter transformed customer service

Technology support is notorious for its poor quality. Early on in the history of the Internet management decided that customer relations was not a core function of a company and that it could be outsourced. The consequence of this was that customer service was reduced to statistics, how many calls were handled and how quickly were issues resolved. Much hung upon the definition of resolved.

Whether technical support of billing issues, customers were confronted with telephone trees that were as time consuming as they were confusing. Technical support became the subject of bitter humor. Everybody knew it was bad, but since everyone had horrible customer support companies could get away with it.

Until Twitter.

All of a sudden your company's horrible customer service became a public embarrassment. At first PR people where hired to handle customer service issues on Twitter, until companies figured out that Twitter had to be integrated into their customer service response.

But what companies have still failed to comprehend is that customer service is a core function of any company. Customer service is public relations, it is how your company relates to the public and how the public experiences your brand. If customer service is poor your brand suffers.

When your company outsources customer service, and makes clear that customer service is a dead end job for employees with no future in the company, you are saying that customers are not important. The larger implications of Twitter customer service issues have yet to be understood.

Behind the scenes at Metro Connection

May's NetSquared meeting was a behind the scenes look at WAMU's Metro Connecton. Producer Tara Boyle and host Rebecca Sheir explained how they and their team of freelance reporters put together they show. A theme is chosen and they work up a series of stories connected to that theme.

For sources they use the Public Insight Network, a database of individuals who are available to be sources. Anyone can list themselves. In the past they have used sources like Help A Reporter Out, but found it unwieldy. As a flack, I too have found it unwieldy.

They also spoke about their use of their website and social media. Their website has evolved and continues to do so. They now want it to be a news source as well as hosting a mix of audio, text, and videos. While most of their audience continues to be on the air, they are pleased with the growth of their online audience. They have a Facebook page and a Twitter feed. It seems that the Facebook page is more for audience engagement while Twitter is also used for research and identifying possible sources. Sheir described Twitter as more diverse because it is all public. She noted with some displeasure that Facebook wants you to pay just to reach out to your subscribers. I share her displeasure.

Edit -
Joe Logon writes his account of the evening: So That's What They Look Like: Behind the Scenes of WAMU's Metro Connection (NetSquared DC Meetup)

Elijah's blog at NetSquared

To Facebook or not to Facebook

Judging from the results of my survey every business should be on Facebook. It is by far the largest social network. So why do I continue to stay away from Facebook except for personal use? I just don't think that it is the correct venue. Selling software on Facebook would be a little like selling software at the dog park. The decision makers may all be there, but the atmosphere just is not right.

Not a single respondent named Facebook as a source of tech news, while both Twitter and LinkedIn were. This reflects my own view that business conversations take place on Twitter and LinkedIn, not Facebook.

If you are a politician, celebrity, or non-profit, you do need to be on Facebook. People like to discuss and promote their favorite causes on Facebook. The Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center is a great example of the effective use of Facebook by a non-profit. Gorgeous pictures of wildflowers help promote the use of native species of plants.

The other problem with Facebook is that they want you to pay for access to your subscribers. It is not enough that users subscribe to your feed, Facebook has a weird algorithm that determines what users actually see. In order to get past that algorithm, you have to pay. That might be worth it for a non-profit or politician, but not a technology company. You are better off using Twitter and LinkedIn to push out content.