Apr. 20, 2022
To whom it may concern, As a retail investor, I have extreme concerns about rule SR-NSCC-2022-003, particularly page 6, “Fire Sale Risk Mitigation”. This rule has all the looks and feels of the 2008 Mortgage Meltdown bailout. Essentially, bad actors, like market makers and hedge funds (previously large “too-big-to-fail” banks) are able to engage in malicious practices like short-selling and naked short-selling(previously sub-prime lenders and CDO sellers). In this case, they are actively betting against American companies, participating and pushing for their demise, and more criminally, selling synthetic shares that don’t exist. Not to mention lending shares which hurts the underlying stock’s value. This is the problem that needs to be addressed. Instead, what the SEC is proposing to do, is develop a method for protecting these organizations from insolvency when their criminal acts and bad bets set them up for failure, liquidation, and insolvency. Please get to work on cracking down on naked short selling (and in my opinion, ALL short selling), and stop acting in the best interest of millionaires and billionaires. Please start protecting the average investor as well as American companies, who are the true representation of the American economy, not the indexed institutions that drive the Dow Jones and S&P 500, etc. Thank you, Rich Rhodes Ruskin, FL