March 2, 2007
This filing is being made in response to the February 23, 2007 comment letter by former CBOT Chairman Nicholas
"Neubaeur" that did not appear on the SEC website until yesterday March 1, 2007.
Neubaeur openly admits to engineering the August 7, 2001 agreement that he was a signatory to along with later censured by his own Board for making misrepresentations to this agency concerning anti-trust claims, CBOE Vice Chairman Mark Duffy and then CBOT President David Vitale who after being deposed as Bank One Vice-Chairman and a CBOE director was instumental in sabotaging the 2000 merger proposal between CBOT and CBOE. Vitale defected to CBOT armed with insider information as one of the CBOE Board Members who was negotiating these controversies with CBOT.
That agreement was ratified and approved by the SEC in filings SR-CBOE-2004-16 and 2005-19 which Spiegel vigorously opposed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court which is made part of the record on February 21 and 28, 2007 in these proceedings.
Neubaeur has made the astonishing legal admission that shadows Spiegel's position that these controversies should be subject to an Article Fifth vote. If the Commission follows the rules of precedent it will accept jurisdiction and approve this filing only for the Court of Appeals to overturn. However, if it were to end this controversy created by its own making as foreshadowed by Spiegel's "COMMENTS ATTACHED" it should nullify the 2004-16 and 2005-19 approvals and as Neubaer suggests subject them to a member vote prescribed by Article Fifth of the CBOE charter.
Unlike any other author that he can recognize here, Spiegel has no financial stake in the current controversy as he owns no memberships in either institutions. He along with even current CBOE members believe there is no basis for CBOE to premptively prevent any further CBOT exercisers from becoming CBOE members prior to the CME merger or approval by any legal or regulatory body. However, Spiegel is at a loss as to why CBOT who correctly is claiming Delaware Chancery Court jurisdiction has not asked for a TRO preserving the status quo for additional CBOT members to continue their ability to utilize the exercise right to become CBOE members as assured on the CBOT website.
Finally, I ask that Commissioner Annette L. Nazareth recuse hereself from deliberating and deciding this matter as she wss intimately involved in the issues leading up to this current controversy when she was served as Director of the SEC Staff in the Division of Market Regulation.
Further, I would like the Commission to opine as to any ethical conflict that may exist by Ungaretti Harris in their February 27, 2007 letter (which also appeared on the SEC website on March 1) where it takes a positon totally contrary to what it previously claimed to have been hired for when Spiegel met with the author of that letter on or around August 2004 along with his fellow current CBOE members, former Vice-Chairman and CBOT exerciser Thomas A. Bond and February 27 commentator Norman S. Friedland.
(Attached File #1: mspiegel1946.pdf)