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April is a big month for people in Lawrence, Kansas, home of the Jayhawks.

You might think it’s because the Jayhawks won the NCAA Men’s Basketball championship.

I’m thinking about municipal bonds.

April marks five years since the day when the city of Lawrence, Kansas, issued municipal bonds to support the purchase of a firetruck.

Now, municipal bonds help cities and towns like Lawrence, and states, to fund hospitals, roads, bridges, school construction, and so on. They form an important part of a $4 trillion market.

There are other bonds that support you and me as well. If we take out a mortgage or we take out an auto loan, that’s something called the securitization market.

And you see, when you take out a mortgage, it doesn’t just sit in a bank. It gets pulled together with other mortgages and sold into the bond market.

These mortgage- and asset-backed securitizations add up to something large: $14 trillion of liquidity to our markets.

Then there’s the corporate bond market—another $10 trillion—that allows companies to raise money to build a new factory, hire more workers, create new products, and innovate.

Not to mention our U.S. Department of Treasury, which also is a big chunk of our bond markets.

This all adds up to about $50 trillion or more of bonds. They’re called the fixed income markets—and it’s as big as our stock market, even a little bigger.

It’s one of the responsibilities of the Securities and Exchange Commission to oversee our capital markets, including the bond markets.

And I think it’s worth asking the question: How can we modernize our rule set here at the SEC, and for the markets, to make sure that these fixed income markets are as efficient, as competitive, and transparent as possible?

That helps lower the cost throughout the markets.

That’s why I’ve asked the staff at the SEC to look for opportunities to strengthen what’s called price transparency, update our rulemaking to reflect the trading that happens on so-called electronic platforms, and take steps to help ensure the bond markets are more resilient.

Better bond markets? That’s a slam dunk.