What is damaging the US Dugup Antiquities Market

Peter Tompa ('Running Amok', CPO Saturday, November 23, 2013) claims:

" Overregulation based on politically correct thinking is damaging ancient coin collecting in the United States.

The actual evidence of that is....? There seems to be no evidence whatsover that the US coins and antiquities market has in actual fact been in any way damaged by anything done to regulate in a somewhat minimal manner the import of fresh coins. The only real damage that has been done is to its reputation, tarnished by the antics of groups of dealer-interest groups like the ACCG.

Ever-eager to present themselves as the victim, Mr Tompa persuades fellow coineys that this is solely a politically-correct imagined:

moral imperative to expiate our "guilt" for being a wealthy market country for antiquities and coins.

No, the guilt actually is in the irresponsible way the market continues to be run. If the market had cleaned itself up when international concerns were raised (with the 1970 UNESCO Convention) there would be absolutely no problem now with a no-questions-asked market shielding looting and smuggling from view. Heck, had they wanted to, American dealers and collectors could even have led the way, they could have been setting the moral goalposts for the global market to follow for the last forty years, instead of being over those decades a significant part of the problem to be dealt with (and another factor tarnishing the image of their country and the values it is seen to represent).