Its dreamed-for high-frequency trading empire in ruins, Nasdaq is turning elsewhere.

U.S. exchanges have become a handful to handle. It seems that all of the order types they've instituted over the years to keep customers and regulators happy may have had the opposite result. But it's not Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders or some other Capitol Hill communist levying these charges. It's the exchanges themselves. And rather than doing something about the things they've done to make themselves "overly complex and opaque" at the expense of ordinary investors, they'd prefer to have Congress make them do something.

Oh you can try a lawsuit but, historically speaking, it won't do shit. Nasdaq is sending a message to firms weighing lawsuits related to trading losses in Facebook's initial public offering: winning won't be easy. The exchange operator believes it is protected by its contracts with members and by its unusual legal status, which is rooted in its dual role as a regulatory body as well as a business that makes money running markets. Exchange officials in recent weeks have pointed out to analysts that Nasdaq has never been successfully sued over a trading error. "When you look at member agreements that people sign, it's quite explicit that they're bound by that accommodation policy," Robert Greifeld, Nasdaq's chief executive, said last week at a Sandler O'Neill + Partners conference, referring to legal agreements capping the exchange's payouts linked to system problems...Banks and brokers have estimated they lost hundreds of millions of dollars due to technical problems during Facebook's May 18 debut. The glitches forced Nasdaq to delay Facebook's opening, and left trades involving millions of shares unconfirmed for hours. Amid the chaos, traders were forced to guess their positions and place additional orders based on those estimates. When Nasdaq delivered the results of the trading Friday afternoon, many firms were caught off guard and scrambled to reposition. According to Greifeld, the last guy who tried to get his money back "trades on the pink sheets now" but take your best shot. Nasdaq Claims Strong Defense [WSJ] Related: UBS Not Sweating The Small Stuff

That something starts with an 'F' and ends with a 'acebook IPO'.

Just weeks after telling Congress that doing their jobs has become too damned hard, the stock exchanges are providing more evidence. This time, the problem is the consolidated tape, which provides trade data. Seems it went out for about an hour at the New York Stock Exchange yesterday, making it tough to see in anyone had traded in 165 unimportant securities like State Street Corp. stock. And NYSE's snafu follows a consolidated tape screw-up at Nasdaq last week; while NYSE's server error only messed with some of its stocks, Nasdaq's consolidated tape feed went totally blank on Thursday.