The conventional wisdom of the proponents of the "rightness" of naked shorting and failures to deliver will hear what is next.
If the SIFMA letter to the SEC Reg SHO site in comment is any indication, I can only hope the SEC will reverse its position on this matter, and not put grandfathering privileges into an entire separate and new "Rule Making Procedure". This would involve an entirely new comment period of most probably years, followed by more of the same that we have seen with Reg SH--.
On July 24, 2007, Reg SHO will have been in process for 8 (EIGHT) years. In the last year, in the face of literally uncountable broken promises by the SEC to Fix this piece of garbage, illegal shorting has exploded, along with related Fails to Deliver.
At what point is this going to be addressed? Japan had a similar problem in the 1980's from real estate and securities margin manipulation literally crashing not only their securities markets, but also their banking system, which even today cannot clean up its mess without risk of imploding their Central Bank, the Federal Reserve of Japan. Forbes did a great series of articles on this Japanese scandal, literally mythical.
There is one undeniable fact here that NO ONE will face, which is all confidence in the system could simply be restored by the DTCC, Clearing Firms, and Banks opening their books to the public, if not across the Board, then on the Companies where there are multiple reasons to suspect abuse. Their refusal to do this makes any allegations of Corruption on a grand scale under our concept of law, in that their silence in the face of the stream of manipulations allegations becomes Consent to the statement of fact.
A moron could figure out something is haywire here, as this is most certainly not Quantum Physics except on a mathematical level. I have shot every weapon in my arsenal with absolutely no result. At this point, I don't believe that one person acting alone, even if right, can make a difference. Only a mob can affect an outcome here, and it must act by the same rules as the unlicensed policemen used by the SEC to handle problems it could not control. The SEC invented that term, and it could come back to haunt them, as the alternative definition of their term "unlicensed policemen" is much scarier: VIGILANTE IS THAT WORD.
Some one must ensure that at least 10% (25% would be better) of the senior officials of the SEC have some practical business exposure, and should not be lawyers. They would deny this need, just as the Mandarins did in China, at least until Mao started sanitizing that society.
In the past, I have not hesitated to back up my assertions with analytical analysis based on personal experience and knowledge gleaned from years of serious work. I am not sure that this has made any difference. The SEC still does its studies without maintaining "Control Groups", all the better to massage the results to their desired outcomes.
I am going to experiment with a series of very brief pieces. No one has ever challenged my offer to debate them in any public forum, nor have I ever been contacted by anyone except for a couple of gutless threats of violence or death to me from parties who wouldn't put their money or bodies where their mouths were.
Keep an eye out. If the meeting on the 13th is the cluster bomb I expect, you will see my first newly designed piece.