I just deleted my email adddress from my account profile at Sirius Radio (NasdaqNM:SIRI).

I've only been a Sirius customer for a week or so. I joined to enjoy the three months of "E Street Radio" celebrating the re-release of Bruce's Born to Run 30 years ago as well as for Howard Stern's arrival on their airwaves in January. During my brief membership, I've averaged one "informational" email every two days or so. More of the subscription spam I've complained about before.

Sirius don't require me to give them an email, so I won't. They'll have to contact me in other ways to let me know my subscription is expiring or whatever. When they agree to respect my wishes not to hear from them by email except about subscription-related issues, or at the very least to limit their emails to infrequent newsletters, then they can have my email again.

One of the arguments for why the current account deficit doesn't matter is that it is balanced by a capital surplus. The capital surplus exists -- they claim -- because the US is still the best place for people who make their money overseas to invest, and that the investment can be expected to continue even as the US continues to owe the rest of the world more and more.

The enemy to this ongoing trade deficit/capital surplus is regulation and protectionism. Pass laws that make it more difficult or less desirable for foreigners to buy assets here and the boat gets rocked, maybe it even flips over and tosses us all into the current. Throw on protectionist measures designed to prevent job losses and the result is the same.

While the US has avoided either of the above situations, recent discussions with an Israeli VC fund manager suggest that there's a further threat, one that has already been legislated and is being enforced.

The VC in question mentioned during a meeting last week that two of the companies in his fund might be IPO candidates, not just candidates for a profitable private sale. But the big surprise was in the IPO strategy proposed: They were looking at the London market.

Historically, the Nasdaq has been the major market used by successful Israeli companies. In recent years, Israeli companies have been a high percentage of foreign companies listed on the Nasdaq, and the bulk of Israel's most successful companies (CHKP, TEVA, ECIL, DSPG and many others) are listed there. There's a great deal of prestige in Israel associated with such a listing.

Yet the Israelis are now looking elsewhere.

The reason? While Nasdaq listings offer better liquidity, the costs associated with Sarb-Ox compliance are just too high to justify for a smaller, growing company. They'd still love to be on the Naz, but the reality is that the European exchanges offer better bang for the buck, in addition to greater geographic proximity to the company and in many cases to the company's markets.

So Israelis are looking to London, thinking that they can always add a US listing later, when they're more successful and can better afford the overhead costs. Maybe.

The big question, of course, is not where a few Israeli companies choose to list themselves. If regulation makes the US a less desirable place for the growing number of international growth companies to list securities, it will, by extenstion, make the US a less desirable place for the new rich of those same foreign countries to invest their profits. And that reality is a real long-term threat to our capital surplus.

I'll be keeping my ear to the ground on this one, as I think it's a long-term issue that is not yet getting much press.