ASX Ltd is a sickness at the heart of Australian capitalism

If you’ve ever wondered whether there’s something sinister going on at the heart of Australia’s free-market economy, you’re right. The mechanism for how markets allocate financial resources to business and the core of Australian financial systems has long been broken.

The repeated failures of the monopolistic Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) and the highly profitable company that operates it (ASX Ltd) are common knowledge. But the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) and the Reserve Bank only took action last year.