April 12, 2008
As an investor who has been severely harmed by naked short selling, I wish to strongly encourage the Commission to adopt, without undue delay, the proposed rules put forward by the National Investor Protection Coalition (File number 4-557).
I believe the Commision has exceeded its authority by allowing broker dealers to credit "securities entitlements" to my brokerage accounts, while misrepresenting these securities entitlements as actual securities with voting and dividend rights. Clearly, securities entitlements do not carry voting rights. However, broker dealers are not disclosing this their customers, and are allowing these securities entitlements to be "voted" illegally. Further, securities entitlements do not receive actual dividends (qualified for the special 15% tax rate for individuals), but rather they receive "payments in lieu of dividends", which the broker dealers routinely misrepresent to the Internal Revenue Service as "qualified dividends". For these reasons I believe the proposed rule should be adopted by the Commission.
Ross C. Burlemann, CPA
Private Investor