An Agenda For a Delicatessen, Not a Regulator

In Wall Street Versus America and in umpteen posts in this blog I've decried how the phony naked short-selling issue has been used to diverted regulatory attention from genuine issues that really hurt investors -- stuff like microcap fraud and brokerage sales practices. The SEC has wasted gobs time on this issue, which is pushed by Internet crackpots, failing CEOs, and unsavory elements of Corporate America.

No better proof of this can be found than in the agenda for the June 13 open meeting of the SEC.

The first two of the four items on the agenda items relate directly to "Regulation SHO," which was passed at the behest of the anti-shorting "Baloney Brigade." The SEC is knuckling under to pressure to tighten up the already dumb provisions of this unnecessary regulation.

As if to prove how boneheaded the whole thing is, while SEC policymakers are wasting their time fiddling with Reg. SHO, SEC enforcement has just begun proceedings against
Chris G. Gunderson, general counsel of something called Universal Express. The company and Gunderson had previously been a subject of lengthy SEC litigation, as noted in the filing. All pretty nasty stuff.

Universal Express's CEO Richard Altomare was the torch-bearer of the Baloney Brigade until he tossed the flaming talisman to the infamous Patrick Byrne, the SEC-investigated CEO of corporate chamber pot Overstock.com. Byrne has proven to be a worthy successor, exceeding Altomare every day in the stock-issuing, red-ink-generating and baloney-spewing department.

The SEC should stop kowtowing to crackpots and blame-shifting CEOs, and put an end to the Reg. SHO charade.

© 2007 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

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Wall Street Versus America was published by Penguin USA on April 6.
Click here for its Amazon.com listing and here for more information on the book, from my web site, gary-weiss.com.