March 29, 2007
Chairman Cox and Members of the Commission,
Most people can understand why Regulation SHO couldn't work. The exemptions and the grandfathering were an open invitation for abuses. Now you extend the comment period. How long will you wait to do your mandated job which is to protect investors and keep the U.S. market fair for companies and investors?
Utah, Virginia, Arizona and Oklahoma has initiated laws to protect investors because you have not enforced the Securities and Exchange Act.
Jim Cramer did a video about market manipulation and in it he says that the SEC doesn't understand. If the folks at the SEC don't understand, I include the link to the video Mr. Cramer made.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTt7IQB9rc0
Many lawsuits have been initiated because that seems to be more effective in bringing the offending manipulators to task as the SEC created loopholes for the manipulators and when the loopholes worked for them, you said, "Give Reg SHO a chance." The failures to deliver increased, and when the public complained, two people at the SEC insulted those who saw that Reg SHO was not designed to stop abuses, but actually made market manipulation easier.
Reg SHO is a failure unless it was iniated to protect those who were in violation. It has worked well for that.
Eliminate the option market maker exemption and the grandfathering provision, and publish the number of fails daily.
The ordinary investors who have been following the debacle of Regulation SHO don't have the juice at the SEC as the Securities Industry does. We witnessed in a Congressional hearing that a phonecall from an attorney for a large brokerage goes directly to the head of Enforcement and the investigation for insider trading gets tabled. We write letters to get you to rescind the rules that violate the Securities and Exchange Act and we get insults and delays.
Mr. Cox, you set the example of what the SEC is supposed to be. Investor confidence will return to the U.S. markets when you clean up the SEC. See that shares are delivered. Anything less is fraud.
Thank you,
Mary Helburn