www.investigatethesec.com petitionGot this in my e-mail after signing the petition:
Friends,
First, thank you for signing the www.investigatethesec.com petition. This site is intended not only to garner signatures, but to educate people on the issues of naked shorting and the SEC's complicity in this fraud perpetrated on the investing public.
Second, it is time now for the site to become the catalyst for grassroots mobilization. As one petitioner has written, "The SEC has ONCE AGAIN, slapped investors' faces. After an 8-month wait, what we get is "bigger changes deferred" and a "Hope" that the naked shorting regs are "beneficial." (Quotes from Annette Nazareth of the SEC.) Plus, a fun new year-long "experiment" and study lifting shorting restrictions on big companies."
We at www.investigatethesec.com implore you to take the next two steps:
1) Bring in 3-4 other signers so our signatures on the petition will be numerically significant enough to catch Congress' attention; and
2) Bring this to the attention of your LOCAL media, which will not only stimulate signatures on the petition, but also position the Website and the issue to be picked up by AP and other services to land in larger market papers.
Below is a letter to the editor written by petition signer Terry (many of you "know" her as Riter on the message boards) which you can use as is or as a basis for creating your own to send to your local paper.
Email it to your Rotary club list, your Chamber of Commerce list, your Sailing Association list, your Business and Professional Women's list...this needs to get off the message boards and off the Internet and into Main Street America. It is a small investor issue AND a small business issue.
Thank you for taking action TODAY. We will be in touch again with more grassroots actions to be taken.
Regards,
The investigatethesec.com Team
This is a generated email. Please do not respond to this email.
If you want to contact us please use investgatethesec@yahoo.com
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Letter to the Editor:
To everyone who has money invested in the stock market, whether through retirement funds or personally chosen investments, and to all who support the growth and prosperity of small business, I urge you to visit the Website www.investigatethesec.com and sign the petition to have the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigated for protecting the interests of Wall Street players over those of the American investor.
If you think Enron, Worldcom and the mutual funds were scandals, learn about how the SEC has turned a blind eye to the trading of counterfeit stock shares for years. On June 23, 2004, the SEC delivered a watered-down version of its Regulation SHO, part of which is designed to stop the abuse of a practice called "naked short selling." In the name of "market liquidity," market makers - those who facilitate trading of stock for profit in return - have been able to sell shares of stock without determining if they are there to sell
To simplify the concept with an everyday example, imagine if you were selling your home, and your real estate broker were to sell your home to 10 different people and keep the money from the other nine. Imagine how you would feel if you were one of the nine people who did not own the deed to your home!
This practice "sells to death" a small company and robs the investors as the shares lose value due to the unauthorized greater number of shares. Another simple analogy: if you and two friends have a three-way investment on a $90,000 property, your share value is $30,000. But if some broker sells that same property to 89,997 other investors, your share value is $1.
The SEC has had this issue brought to their attention by investors for a decade and done nothing until very recently. And what they have done is deliver another regulation without substantial teeth for enforcement, plus one that loosens up regulations in an experiment with large companies to be "studied" for one year. The premise is to put U.S. markets on a level playing field with foreign investments, but what it really does is open up more doors for market corruption, put the American investor at further risk, and enable more financial market funds to go to terrorists.
I have tried to refine a long and complicated issue down to its essence in this letter. The bottom line is, if you have an investment in the markets or a business you hope to take public one day, I - again - urge you to visit the Website Website www.investigatethesec.com, educate yourself, protect your investment - your dreams - and sign the petition. It is time the SEC meet its Congressional mandate and its mission "to protect investors and maintain the integrity of the securities markets."