May 4, 2009
If your administration wants middle class citizens to participate in the stock market, rules will need to be put in place to level the playing field.
I ask that you at least return the uptick rule and require covering of short selling. For too long, short sellers and hedge fund managers have been able to manipulate the markets, driving down the value of stock of soundly managed companies that many of us have invested in.
I am nearing retirement age and lost about 30% of the value of my retirement portfolio. I doubt if I will reenter the market unless the rule-bending Wall Street hot-shots are curtailed. The previous administrations apparently loosened controls and created a wild-West mentality on Wall Street.
I am also concerned about how the US looks abroad when we allow financial companies to package unsound investments and ratings agencies to give them unrealistically high ratings. Who is watching the watchdogs?
Let's bring justice through truth and reconciliation since this is certainly a fraud against us hard-working citizens who worked, saved and invested with pride in American business, only to have greedy whiz-kids make fools of us all.
Our financial institutions are too large if they are too large to fail. And our financial markets have been allowed to get too complicated --- and everthing is interrelated. Let's simplify and break down the financial behemoths so that we can control the economy and they don't control government.