Grief, you any idea how much time I've spent _at banks_ trying to knock information into shape? There are _no_ good sources of this information. You take a feed from NYSE and I guarantee you'll find errors _on NYSE information_. The more complex the product, the more data points, the worse it gets. And I've only talked about static data. If you want to actually trade, it gets much, much, harder.
This brought back troubling memories of discovering that a non-trivial amount of the world's economic data seems to be shuttled around banks via batch-generated CSV files, only accessible via nightly FTP drops.
CSV is a grand solution, one that has a hell of a lot less over head than any other "api" that many HN readers would normally see.