September 17, 2008
Dear sirs,
I may not understand it in totality, but it seems that the SEC has dropped the ball and allowed short sellers to kill major companies, most recently Lehman and AIG. My understanding is that short sellers no longer have to hold or even borrow the securities to short a company’s stock. This is ridiculous.
I also understand that there is no longer an “uptick” rule. So once a short seller smells blood, they can basically drive a company’s stock to virtually nothing.
The short sellers are making tens or hundreds of millions of dollars while destroying a company’s market value. As if this isn’t bad enough, the government then is forced to put my tax dollars at risk to keep the company (AIG, for example) afloat; so I get screwed twice.
Could someone in there please explain this rationale? Is anyone paying attention to what is happening? My retirement and savings are being wiped out and the only ones making money are the hedge fund managers shorting me.
Please reinstitute these programs or explain why they shouldn’t be in place. I await your response as I watch my savings disappear.
Kelly G. Harbour
Porter & Associates, CPA's