August 27, 2007
Nancy M. Morris, Secretary
Securities and Exchange Commission
100 F Street, NE
Washington. D.C. 20549-1090
Re: Comments on Amendments to Regulation SHO
File No. S7-19-07
Dear Ms. Morris:
The data used to construct the attached graph was published on The Securities Industry Association (SIA) website prior to its merger with The Bond Market Association to form The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA). These totals, "Receivables: Failed to Deliver" (line 69 of original document) and "Payables: Failed to Receive" (line 103 of original document), are line items on the combined balance sheets of all NYSE member firms (original reference link: www.sia.com/research/other/qrt_res.xls, printout of annual tab attached). End of 2006 data currently published by SIFMA augmented the 1980 – 2005 data for this graph.
This graph illustrates the securities industry's ever increasing appetite for fraudulently selling securities that do not exist. The total marked-to-market value of NYSE member firms failed settlements totaled $82.3 billion at the end of 2006.
Two important points must be noted about the fact that the data are marked-to-market:
(1) As failed securities deliveries illegally inflate the number of those securities outstanding, the law of supply and demand makes it likely that the money paid by customers in clearing those failed settlements was significantly higher.
(2) Similarly, the undelivered liability residing on the balance sheets of NYSE member firms is significantly higher than these marked-to-market values since retiring this surplus of unregistered securities necessarily will require a contraction of available supply at a steadily increasing price, absent other influences.
Thus, the mark-to-market value understates both the amount NYSE member firms are stealing from their customers and the systemic risk these firms are placing on our capital markets.
According to the data presented here, for some unknown reason the Commission is willing to accept fraud measured on a scale of hundreds of billions of dollars. We should set the bar a lot higher in this country, fraud should never be tolerated. A goal of zero delivery failures is achievable in this technological age.
Please eliminate the options market maker exception as soon as possible. Delivery failure of paid for securities should never be allowed. Please take all other steps necessary to ensure 100% compliance with Section 17A of the Exchange Act and eradicate settlement failures in our capital markets.
(Attached File #1: s71907-87a.pdf)
(Attached File #2: s71907-87b.pdf)