April 17, 2007
To whom this may concern:
"The current definition of a threshold security is based, in part, on a security having a threshold level of fails that is equal to at least one-half of one percent of an issuers total shares outstanding. Is the current threshold level (one-half of one percent) too low or too high? If so, how should the current threshold level be changed?"
That is the easiest question of all. The level should be zero.
Is it not theft without penalty? Grand larceny.
Any investor, any single person or group, business, broker, fund, should borrow first if they are selling short. The protection you give to a select group while they rob companies and investors with counterfeit shares is preposterous -- no, it is criminal.
If a party has sold short without borrowing first, that party must buy to cover immediately, within 24 hours, and especially before they are allowed to partake in any further investment transactions. On the spot fines for any party repeating this failure to borrow, and a probationary period when they are disallowed from selling short. They must be supervised.
Can we have a level playing field where a company's fundamentals count?
Does it take an eternity for the SEC to understand the damage they are allowing to happen, hurting the individual investor by providing the tools to manipulate the market to the specialists?
When the SEC fails to deliver real justice to those who break the security transaction laws, they fail to protect the individual investor who was led to believe that the SEC was put in place to protect them from fraud.
Every time I sell a stock I have to pay a fee to you. Tell me, what kind of a fee does the specialist pay when he sells phantom shares?
What are you doing? When will things change? Please delay no longer on this important rule change.
Thyra Mangan