This is kind of amazing:

This is complicated stuff (for people with no financial background, like me, it’s nightmarish) and I have a longer thing about this coming out later. But the essence of this story is that Tyler Durden over at Zero Hedge has, for months, been complaining that Goldman has been manipulating the NYSE, in particular manipulating program trading in somewhat the same way (although perhaps not to the same extent) that they manipulated the commodities markets. In order to make his case — and his theory has gained a lot of acceptance, to the point where Goldman had to respond to the allegations publicly — he has been analyzing data the NYSE releases on program trading every week.

So what happened this week? The NYSE announced that it will no longer be releasing its weekly program trading data. This is quite obviously a move designed to make it even more impossible to track what’s going on in the NYSE and shield, in particular, Goldman Sachs. Let’s hope there’s a public uproar about this; Zero Hedge posted contact info for NYSE officials, and has urged readers to petition the exchange to restore the old rules in the name of transparency.