From: Carol Streamer [faststream@livewirenet.com] Sent: Tuesday, January 27, 2004 3:46 PM To: Jonathan G Katz Subject: New Confirmation and Point of Sale Disclosure Requirements To: Jonathan G. Katz, Secretary Securities and Exchange Commission 450 Fifth Street, NW Washington, DC 20549-0609 Dear Sec. Katz, I realize I am not one of your major investors. I never had very much income considering the most jobs I was ever offered paid the minimum wage. When one earns $1.25/hr and $2.25/hr and after 40 hours of slavery on a job without a future goes home to pay $165/month rent, unreal utility bills for telephone, water, sewer service and of course, electricity and gas -- well one did have to invest in food and a rare trip to a dentist and the doctor. You see, people at this end of the scale are fired if they need time off to visit a dentist to have one's teeth cleaned or a doctor for an ordinary thing like a flu shot, etc. We didn't have money to invest in private transportation or in private housing. Who would loan money to someone whose job might only last a few days or weeks. Those are the realities of many these days. So, when a friend suggested that it would be wise to invest one's Social Security money in stock and get a better return. No that didn't sound very practical but she did have a point. It's one thing to advocate doing such a thing but what if you took the money that was stored in the bank at .078% interest and put it in a more secure investment that would pay a higher return. Obviously, something is the matter when banks are paying under 1% interest. I had carefully saved all my birthday money a long time ago in a Business Bank. I was given 3% interest. At that time I had just finished reading The Witch of Wall Street about Hetty Green Robinson who at the beginning of the 20th Century merely wanted a checking account in her own name. You see the bankers at that time felt women were very poor investment decision makers because of their lack of knowledge about arithmetic. This poor banker I encountered opened his mouth and said to me, "No, there is no mistake that is the interest payment you were to receive this quarter!" The problem was that I had never opened my mouth to ask him why is there were fewer banking holidays in a quarter than there had been the year before and no money had been added or removed, why was the interest paid shown on my statement 50 cents less than the year before. I carefully documented my bank investment for 20 years and the amounts I had been paid in interest and mailed it off to the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Very soon later interest rates jumped from 3% to 5% to 6% to even 22% for long term bank CD investments. I always figured it was a backlash for all the men and women (now deceased who had been cheated out of their rightful interest earnings over 75 years. I always figured that banks had been stealing quite legally from investors who closed accounts and left behind interest payments. Apparently, State Treasurers in several States figured the same thing out and decided that leftover money belonged to the State Treasury. The same being true about safety deposit boxes that remained untouched for years. I could be wrong but I think a backlash has occurred in the vault of the Securities that women like Hetty Green Robinson was concerned about. The more educated women become, the less likely they are to invest in choices made by male accountants, male law clerks, and male investment house clerks. These clerks often seem to be about 23 to 27 years old and with limited investment experience to use to provide advice to elderly investors who inherited a little spare cash and wanted a fair share return on their investment in America. The United States of America is a major Corporation. It was set up as such in Colonial Times by Bankers in Boston, Philadelphia, New York City, etc. We would all be shareholders with a stockholder vote in each Election Period for local, state and federal candidates. So in reading shareholder reports I learned that my only options were to raise the salaries of the Board of Directors and increase their perks, and agree to reappoint them to their high salary jobs. In some cases, I noticed that not woman's name appeared on any Board slate ever presented. I also noted that women were not in authority positions. When I went to stores to purchase the products made by these corporations I discovered they really didn't suit the needs of women. Clothes didn't fit. Health care products didn't work. Grocery items kept going up in price but lacked nourishment or taste. Over the years the jobs held by women also vanished little by little. That is until employers discovered that male candidates for employment wanted too much pay and had become very demanding. All over America shareholders are dissatisfied and with good reason. The young punks who frequently get the big salaries don't want to answer the phone, or talk to customers or deal with problems. They often have trouble focusing on the big picture because its beyond the thinking of one or a small group of minds. In the 21st Century it is important to live up to the ideals of the Colonial Spirit which encouraged group thinking on a very large scale. Corporations of the past held Major Town Meetings to resolve issues that everyone needed a say in. Surely, some of those meetings were very narrow minded but Americans have always been free to move to a new Corporation if the one you live within no longer agrees with your current or future needs. The costs and expenses were not hidden from the investors. Wrong doing and shady transactions were dealt with sometimes with a duel or a jury and tar and feathers. Something is very wrong when nobody is making money and nobody has a job, and nobody can afford health care, and nobody gets any return on their investments. Investor Focus Groups sound very promising. Let's hope they come to be and prosperity creeps back in.