<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <META content="MSHTML 6.00.2600.0" name=GENERATOR> <STYLE></STYLE> </HEAD> <BODY bgColor=#ffffff> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>None of the proposals will save any stocks in the short-term, since any new rules will take months to implement at the fastest rate and the criminal penalties cannot be applied retroactively (so they can't somehow deter crime that has already happened).  </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Current legislation is all about deterring future reporting fraud and creating more corporate disclosure and standards can only help.  </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The idea that either Bush speeches or president Congressional legislation can have any major effect on current evaluations, other than in pushing values around for a couple of hours at best, is ridiculous.  If stocks are plunging, it's because investors have finally decided that all of the investment pablum they've been fed for a decade was bullshit.  Stocks are going to find the bottom where that skepticism meets some more reasonable standard of stock valuation.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV>Nathan </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV> <DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A title=Nomiprins@aol.com href="mailto:Nomiprins@aol.com">Nomiprins@aol.com</A> </DIV> <DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=lbo-talk@lists.panix.com href="mailto:lbo-talk@lists.panix.com">lbo-talk@lists.panix.com</A> </DIV> <DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Saturday, July 20, 2002 9:54 AM</DIV> <DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: 390/4.87%</DIV> <DIV><BR></DIV><FONT face=arial,helvetica><FONT size=2>In a message dated 7/20/2002 2:21:04 AM Eastern Daylight Time, <A href="mailto:peterk@enteract.com">peterk@enteract.com</A> writes:<BR><BR><BR> <BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px" TYPE="CITE">Whoosh, unawares I was at a bar and someone mentioned<BR>the Dow dropped 400 today. Huh? And narry a comment on LBO-list.<BR><BR>I guess the system is just "correcting itself." And "dealing<BR>harshly" with those miscreants who misrepresented<BR>their basics to the market. Meanwhiles, retirees' savings<BR>are being wiped out. I hope Democrats water down<BR>anti-corporate legislation, as they appear to be doing.<BR>Sooner or later they'll reap the shitstorm.<BR><BR></BLOCKQUOTE><BR>Proposals of installing yet another layer of bureacracy such as a fraud task force, or additional auditing committee (the FASB already exists to set accounting standards, and the SEC is supposed to read the filings they receive from corporations to detect fraud), and higher penalties for white collar crime (which is useless cause no CEO or CFO is being indicted for anything beyond minor art collection tax fraud) will not correct the market and will not help retirees. The Democratic suggestions are as much window dressing as the Republican ones (i.e 'citizen' McCain). Neither have given the market confidence as indicated not just by yesterday's fall, but by the 11% drop since Bush's corporate integrity speech last week. True reform might start with slicing a percentage of every CEO's cash-out and giving it back to the employee retirement funds they raped, or how about even freezing their assets?<BR><BR>Nomi</FONT> </FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>