In a recent article, Edward Knight, the global chief legal and policy officer at Nasdaq Inc., offered his own views on reforms that would contribute to greater resiliency for the US capital markets.  Knight suggests that greater retail participation in the stock markets should be encouraged.  He looks to Sweden’s investment savings accounts, which provide for investments to be made in various securities, with tax liability assessed based on the value of the account, as a means of encouraging more active participation.  Knight notes that the introduction of investment savings accounts in Sweden can be shown to have some correlation with an increase in IPO activity.  While an interesting idea, it is not clear that we would see more companies choose to go public (rather than remain private and finance at attractive valuations or sell at attractive valuations) if there were a higher retail participation rate or that direct retail participation rather than participation through funds would make a difference.  Knight also suggests that Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission address market structure issues that may impair liquidity for smaller companies.  He also recommends more transparency relating to reporting of ownership positions.  Knight advocates regulations that would mandate that holders of short positions be subject to reporting.  Knight also calls for a merger of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission into a single agency in order to eliminate regulatory overlaps and redundancies.  A number of these reforms have been advanced through proposed bills in prior sessions of Congress.  Just this week, the US Senate advanced a handful of capital markets related measures for further consideration.  It will be interesting to see whether some of these suggestions find their way into a JOBS Act 3.0.