Reading the heavy duty polemic of last week's issues of the newspaper, along the appointment of a new General Manager of the BSE and becoming nostalgic at the evenings of debates taking place at a speed of over 100 IQ, when the BSE was becoming operational, I have decided to break my self-imposed silence and have decided to enter the arena together with these two awesome polemists: Make and Doru NICOLAESCU. Reflecting on the birth of some public institutions in the young Romanian princedoms, Titu MAIORESCU wrote that "we are a nation of forms without substance". How right he was! The issue of the BSE and of many other institutions fundamental which are fundamental to a capitalist system, meant to modernize and normalize the Romanian society, is that they have been created as forms without substance.

Of course you, Make, my dear friend, are right! The Romanian Parliament, the Romanian Government and the National Bank of Romania put in a lot of work to create this new fundamental economic sector which is necessary in a market economy, the capital market.

But was the BSE the child that everyone wanted? Was it the child raised in the family's living room, or a child abandoned and left to fend for itself and find the resources needed for its growth and development wherever it may find? Was the BSE developed as legitimate member of the new post-December democracy or was it just the black sheep of the family, which was supposed to be kept alive only so it can be shown in case someone from abroad came checking to see whether it was still alive?

Had it been more than a vehicle of the privatization process intended to get the international institutions to shut up, then the government bonds could have been issued by the Ministry of Finance directly at the BSE, because, as far as I can recall, the BSE was perfectly capable, from a technical point of view, to c