Jan. 12, 2024
To All involved at the SEC: I am urging the SEC to NOT ALLOW the NYSE to list "Natural Asset Companies or NACs, pursuant to File No. SR_NYSE-2023-09. I am a capitalist to my core, but believing in free markets requires some ground rules, which cannot and must not be manipulated to keep the playing field level and fair and to engender positive outcomes. The continued efforts to financialize productive natural resources to subvert the legal system, to pervert the capital markets and to cause harmful outcomes for both investors and the US alike cannot be enabled! NACs are not only a "new type of company", something that is highly irregular and should require much scrutiny, but also have employed their own type of accounting system. Even if they use GAAP accounting within NAC financial reporting, their hubris that there is some separate accounting measures to be used within the financial markets raises too many red flags to count and should be immediately disqualifying. NACs seek to use other's money, including that obtained via the capital markets, to buy the ability to control or "manage" productive public and private land and other natural resources. Their stated purpose in doing so is not to protect, conserve, restore and preserve these natural "assets" based on whatever their own definitions of those activities are. NACs will impact our ability to generate and access energy, critical minerals, water and food, but it could also put those decisions in the hands of institutions, such as FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS and sovereign wealth funds, who could invest in these NACs and have de facto CONTROL over AMERICAN resources. Americans and the SEC CANNOT ALLOW this to happen!!! I urge you to DO NOT ALLOW NACs to access our capital markets via NYSE listings or otherwise!! Gale E Hohwald [REDACTED]