Jim:     

I am talking about my campaign to bring back the Uptick Rule... and to return to the regime that worked so well before Chris Cox, and his renegade so-called capitalists, took over the SEC, and decided to turn the stock market into an anarchistic, chaotic free-fire zone... with most of the bullets pointing at you, the smaller investor.

The Cox SEC, relying on bogus science scrapped this rule, because they believed you no longer needed protection from the repacious hedge funds. Cox and his crew drew upon the works of professors, using data compiled during the greatest bull market in history, to conclude that the Uptick Rule, which was designed to work in bear markets - just like what we went through - meant nothing... that the shorts would never try to bang down stocks with bear raids... that the shorts were actually good actors, all of them... totally unmotivated by greed... just trying to provide liquidity to the market.

The SEC took counsel of the exchanges and the brokers that though the rule inhibited volume. It took counsel of the quantitative funds, that couldn't make enough money feasting off you to please their rich investors.

Well, I've got some bad news for the entrenched interest in Washington... who aided and abetted the perpetrators of the greatest shakedown in history...

My crusade to restore the Uptick Rule is no longer a one-man show...

I have here in my hand a list of 5,691 names... all of the people who signed a petition, calling for reinstatement of the Rule... and I quote...

"We believe that a relatively simple check that was in place for nearly 70 years, the Uptick Rule, helped serve the markets well in balancing various participants' interests. We therefore urge the SEC to reinstate such a price test rule and specifically would urge such a plus-tick rule over other alternatives, such as a best bid or a circuit breaker test."

This is very sophisticated. No, we're not just saying, "bring it back" or whatever...

This petition will be hand delivered to the SEC on Monday as part of the common period to debate this issue... a common period that I hope will be a prelude to restoring order to the chaos, if the government listens this time to the people it purports to represent.

Now I'm going to give you a couple of personal comments about how I feel about this... the Uptick Rule...

I am no nave, or uninformed, professor... who has never been on a trading desk. I am, and was, a seasoned professional. And, for many of the 14 years at my hedge fund, where I averaged 24% for my clients after all fees... better than just about everyone in this country... I brought in about half my profits from shorting. I abided by the rule. I made a lot of money, and I never needed to sew fear or raid down stocks to do it.

So I know for a fact that not one good short seller, ferreting out bad companies, will be hurt by reinstating this rule. But the people who want to instill panic... the people who cost the taxpayers tens of billions of dollars in bailout money, because the banks where the short sellers... that the short sellers were targeting... were then unable to raise money to offset their bad loans... Those people would do anything to stop this rule from being reinstated, including ginning up... ginning up... bogus work about how it would actually hurt the capital markets to reinstate it.

What a joke!

You take it from me - a practitioner almost all my life - that they're lying their darn fool heads off, and they're counting on the naivitee of the government to work their greedy magic...

When the creators of the Uptick Rule described why it was necessary, they didn't talk about the rights of the short sellers, for heaven's sake... they talked about the need to police the market for you... the need to stop the malicious shorts who drove good companies into oblivion by raiding their stocks... people who nearly destroyed capitalism to line their own pockets!

This rule was created during the Great Depression to prevent the possibility of another Crash, like the one that began in 1929... It's about helping you, and always has been...

But the Cox SEC fought for the rights of the short sellers, and the way I see it, it's so that they could have the freedom to wreck stocks and the companies underneath them. No wonder we had the third-worst bear market in history...

Chris Cox and his colleagues must have thought somehow that greed had disappeared from the face of the earth... because that's the only way the Uptick Rule would be meaningless.

The thousands of people who signed this petition... they know better. So does the author of this letter - the letter that I signed - Eric Ober, a former managing director in the derivatives department of Goldman Sachs, who has done more studying, more rigorous work on the destruction of stocks wrought by the repeal of this rule than all the professors and SEC staffers and the commissioners combined.

I believe the Obama SEC knows better too. The common period is still on. There's still time to make your voice heard by going to the SEC's website.

I am making my voice heard in Washington... along with my signature... when the SEC opens for business on Monday morning. And if you want a level playing field... if you want the stock market to be safe again... I hope you will too.

[end of segment]