BOBO hit the nail on the head yesterday. -------------Location: Blogs Bob O'Brien's Sanity Check Blog
Posted by: bobo 8/23/2007 5:37 AM
A lot of stuff has happened during this last week.
A study came out that showed that the majority of Wall Street would commit a felony if they thought they could get away with it. Wow. What a newsflash. Next thing they will say is that the majority of hookers will steal your wallet if they thought they could get away with it.
Huh.
And this is the succinct reason that self-regulation is a farce. The MAJORITY of those expected to police themselves are crooks. Seems pretty straightforward to me. Crooks who would break the law, gladly, if they thought they could get away with it are not capable of the honesty required to self-police.
On that topic, I note that the professional association of the crooks (SIFMA) is now advocating eliminating paper certificates, which are the only proof the individual shareholder can get that he actually wasn't screwed by the crooks. That also isn't too hard to figure out - they want to do away with any mechanism that would show them counterfeiting shares. Simple. Question is, is there anything we can do about it, other than pulling every last dime out of the market, never to return?
The credit situation continues to deteriorate. As predicted, we are just now understanding the level of damage that unregulated hedge funds, holding questionable assets they then leverage by 10 or 20 or higher, can cause when the assets fall out of bed and lose value. Synopsis: It ain't pretty, and it is going to get much worse before it gets better. Call it a hunch.
The SEC's decision to damage the investor so Wall Street privateers can run roughshod over the equities market (by eliminating the uptick rule) has resulted in daily bear raids on the markets, which seemingly everyone on the planet except for the experts that weighed in for eliminating it figured out. So we now have a virtually completely unregulated market, in the sense that few regulations that would stop massive market manipulation exist, and those that do, are routinely ignored.
Some, like the market maker exemption, which allows options market makers to naked short limitless numbers of shares, directly damaging equity investors, are being examined by the SEC, with a sort of credulous, "Is that bad, to allow options speculators to destroy the equity investors' market, thereby directly harming investors, in direct contradiction to the SEC's mandate?"
And I thought their true 'mandate' was to kiss Wall Street's azz. Or, so it appears. Hahahahaha.....RTB
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