May 5, 2009
The uptick rule worked well for 70 years. Removing it has been a disaster for the retail investor and it has destroyed companies by making it impossible for them to raise capital.
We need to restore the original uptick rule and not put in place a cosmetic circuit breaker rule that will not protect anyone except the profits of the unregulated hedge funds who conducted the "bear raids" that destroyed Bear Sterns and other companies.
The rules agoinst "naked" short selling needs to be rigidly enforced with an automatic buy back if shares are not delivered in 3 days just like in any other sale.
We need a thorough investication of the funds that managed to make so many naked short saled of companies like Lehman that there were 130% of the issued shares in the float. The Wall Street Journal had did a thorough investigation of the fall of Lehman Brothers showing how a coordinated bear raid made it impossible to Lehman to raise capital and doomed it to failure. This was criminal, but where is the investigation?
The leveraged ETFs that promised 2X or 3X long or short are a violation of the margin rules. These ETfs should have the same 50% margin rule as anyone else. Now they are an unjust way for people to mipulate the market.
It is time to make the market an even playing field and not one tilted in favor of the hedge funds and other "monied" interests.
Give the small retail investor a chance or he will be gone from the mrket for generations. The previous administration believed that "the market self regulates". That has been shown to be false. Without regulation the market steals from the weaker hands.
RESTORE THE FULL UPTICK RULE NOW