serving the US government securities market. It provides real-time quote and transaction data, including price and volume, for Treasury bills, notes, bonds, and government agency securities. GovPx disseminates the composite information to its subscribers for a fee. This centralized reporting and dissemination system produces an extremely transparent government securities market.

3. _GSEs._ AgencyPX, a joint venture of GovPX and Garban-Intercapital plc, publishes real time inter-dealer bids and offers, last trade, yield spreads, and history and news for the US government agency market. In addition, Bloomberg LP and other third party vendors publish average daily price quotations for TBA trades, which include only generic securities. Daily pricing of such trades is also available from a dealer network.<sup>124</sup> Finally, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac report all buy and sell activity on their websites and to the SEC, which then makes the information available to the public.

4. _Municipal securities_ . The transparency of the municipal securities market increased in the 1990s. Municipal securities transactions are reported under the rules of the MSRB.<sup>125</sup> The MSRB publishes a daily report that includes the high, low and average price (and total par) for all municipal securities traded the previous day. The Bond Market Association makes the information available to the public on its website, and it also is available to the SEC, the NASD and the other relevant agencies for surveillance and enforcement purposes.<sup>126</sup> The MSRB also has indicated that it is considering a move from next-day dissemination to real-time dissemination by the middle of 2004.<sup>127</sup> 5. _Corporate debt securities._ The corporate debt securities market was historically not a transparent market. This was due in part to the enormous differentiation of the securities themselves, and the fact that holders of corporate debt were largely institutional investors who, it was believed, were able to look out for themselves.

As noted above, the SEC began reviewing the transparency of the debt market in 1998 and issued a call for greater transparency in the corporate debt market. Chairman Levitt called for the NASD to: (i) adopt rules requiring all transactions in US corporate debt securities to be reported to the NASD, and to develop a system to receive and distribute transaction prices on an immediate basis; (ii) create a database of transactions in corporate bonds to enhance the surveillance and supervisory ability of the NASD and other regulators; and (iii)

> 124 SEC Staff Report on Enhancing Disclosure in the Mortgage-Backed Securities Markets, supra note 23, p. 16.

> 125 MSRB Rule G-14.

> 126 The SEC approved the recent increases in transparency despite opposition from the Bond Market Association which raised concerns that the move would reduce market liquidity, particularly for lessfrequently traded bonds. _See,_ Comment  Letter to Jonathan G. Katz, Secretary, SEC, May 9, 2003.   In 1994, the SEC proposed that municipal securities dealers disclose on transaction confirmations the amount of  their mark-up in so-called "riskless principal" transactions.  Not surprisingly, the industry vigorously opposed the rule, which ultimately was not adopted. _See_ SEC Rel. No. 34-33743, 1994, _and_ Comment Letter of Fenn Putman, Chairman, Public Securities Association, June 21, 1994.

> 127  MSRB Notice 2003-3, February 3, 2003.

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