Would mark ingebretsen, a columnist for The Wall Street Journal Online, have begun this book-on how Nasdaq became a global brand, representing equity democratisation-any differently had he got wind of the current 'front running' scandal afflicting the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)?

No, you'd guess. After using his preface for the customary tribute to the role of efficient capital markets in America's wealth, the author gets right with it: the April 14, 2000, sell-off. After a giddy doubling of the Nasdaq Composite index over 1999, that was the day of the big crash that threw the Internet Revolution into jeopardy, and with it, the grand vision of a 24/7 global market that enlis-ted profitless lil dreamshops and gave direct online trading access to everyone.

What did it? Greed, perhaps, sparked by too much money chasing too few stocks. Or a sudden confidence bust-up, with hands thrown up in exasperation over the feared demise of Economic Man (remember Robert Shiller's Irrational Exuberance?). Or a sudden rediscovery of the P/E ratio. Who knows?

What's known is that Nasdaq still attracts the West Coast's 'nerd kings', to the puzzlement of the East Coast's 'authority figures'. ''An earlier generation wrote music,'' says the author, ''The nerd kings wrote code.'' While the book's grandiose subtitle suggests a story blown way out of proportion to hold much conviction, Ingebretsen does manage to win some confidence in Nasdaq's retaining its allure. And this he does, ironically, by tracing Nasdaq's history through the lens of a scam-watcher.

Nasdaq, or nasdaq, an acronym for National Association of Securities Dealers' Automated Quotation system, was created in 1971 to computerise over-the-counter dealer trading, a system that features umpteen deals among umpteen mutually competitive dealers (per stock), unlike NYSE's centralised floor auctions (one counter per stock). The claimed advantage? Enhanced liquidity-all so crucial to small-cap start-ups.

NASD, though, was formed in response to the 1929 NYSE crash, which threw up sordid tales of insider trading (at Ford, for example) and angry howls for regulation. It took a liquidity crunch during the Black Monday crash of 1987, for Nasdaq to institute new rules that-in hindsight-gave the exchange its very own scandal. Exposed in 1991, this was the 'spread fixing' scandal, in which dealers colluded to widen the pocketed difference between 'bid' and 'ask' prices. It tarnished the brand, for it made a mockery of 'competitive dealer trading'. And it was only after ex-cartel-analyst Frank Zarb took over as Nasdaq's chief (in 1997), crushed the artificial spreads, gave immediacy to direct trading, articulated a global web vision and launched a charm offensive, that the brand's credibility was restored.

The dotcom mania may be over, but NASDAQ remains the democratiser-in-chief of the equity culture. Being cyberspatial, it could even have continued trading through 9-11, but chose not to (in recognition of the attack's symbolism).

Whether a dealer system is more efficient than an auction system, however, remains contentious. Auction trading is less chaotic, and thus harder for rogues to exploit. Moreover, floor-based human interaction has its unique dimensions of information exchange that Nasdaq can't lay hands on. Also, it seems less favourable than NYSE to ordinary shareholders in many ways (in allowing multiple classes of stock, for instance). Yet, the predominant thought this book leaves you with is just how under-evolved capital markets remain, per se. How manipulable, how un-self-regulatory and yet, how necessary.