Subject: Comments for File Number S7-12-11

May 27, 2011

I’m writing because my family and I were affected by the economic collapse of 2008, and we don’t want it to happen again.

I’m writing because my family and I were affected by the economic collapse of 2008, as was the entire state of Nebraska, as was the United States as a whole. Every state in this country is now broke, and the country itself has been broke for years, because the Wall Street executives who have long walked and still walk away with the money, have long invested it elsewhere. This is robbery on a grand scale, and prosecutions on a grand scale should certainly have followed the 2008 collapse. They did not. Nothing significant has been done to serve justice, so these shell-game thieves are free to go at it again. You have the power to change that situation.

Wall Street greed and outrageous pay practices were the major cause of the collapse. One way to change the incentives so they don’t collapse our economy again would be for regulators to use a *safety index* for incentive compensation, instead of a profit index. Currently, most bankers receive stock options. So if they can generate more profits, the stock price goes up, and their options become more valuable. Instead, they should be using the bank’s bond price, which measures the overall ability of the bank to repay its own debt.

But the most important measure necessary to remedy the potential for another economic disaster is due punishment for practices that enrich these criminals at the expense of this democracy. Their incentive to carry on such practices would be severely curtailed if the failure of their financial institutions meant personal failure as well. Rather than allowing them to walk away with the money and the oppotrunity to try again, these failed executives should have their personal fortunes seized and they should never again be allowed to serve in any position of economic significance.

Failure is failure, and when those responsible for the failure of an entire economic system are not held accountable, and instead find that they have absolutely nothing to lose, there is no reason on earth for them to try to succeed in the future. For years they have moved their personal wealth into safe havens outside the United States while they watched this country go bankrupt, and they have had absolutely nothing to lose in doing it.

You now have the power to change this situation, and I challenge you to do it, for everyone who believed over the past 235 years in this country's potential for becoming a great democracy, and for those who are still waiting, but who still believe.

Thank you for considering my comment,

Neil Harrison

Norfolk, NE