Tag: sec

SEC Plan to Track Americans’ Stock Investments Sparks Legal Fight

All stock trades conducted on U.S. exchanges will soon be surveilled by the government, according to a newly implemented plan by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The SEC’s “Consolidated Audit Trail” (CAT) mandate would “allow regulators to efficiently and accurately track all activity throughout the U.S. markets,” the SEC stated.

In announcing the launch of this plan, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler stated in September 2023 that “prior to CAT’s creation, regulators lacked a consolidated view of the material information of all orders in [exchange-traded] securities.”

The CAT plan was originally proposed under the Obama administration in 2012 but remained dormant under the Trump administration. It is currently being resurrected under the Biden administration.

This plan ran into some resistance last week, however, from a group of lawyers and retired judges who see it as a historic violation of Americans’ civil rights.

A complaint filed on April 16 by the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), as a prelude to a lawsuit, called the CAT mandate “an unprecedented scheme by an administrative agency … to unilaterally set in motion one of the greatest government-mandated mass collections of personal financial data in United States history.”

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Beware the SEC’s Creation of ‘Natural Asset’ Companies

To anyone who tracks the efforts of environmentalists, their policies often have an ulterior motive. They neither result in a better society nor do they produce better habitats. Their policy preferences also do not consider how using the land improves the land for man and wildlife. Instead, many environmentalists advocate for policies at the expense of farmers, miners, and others who create usable, tangible, societal benefits from the land. This often leaves observers to wonder: what are environmentalists really after?

The answer is power and money. It turns out, that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) are quietly working on a rule that may prove this ulterior motive.

On September 29, the SEC, at the request of the NYSE, proposed a rule that would create an entirely new type of company called a Natural Asset Company (NAC). NACs, according to the Proposed Rule, “hold the rights to ecological performance.” These companies would be given license to control lands, both public and private, and would be required not to conduct any “unsustainable activities, such as mining, that lead to the degradation of the ecosystems.”  In effect, this means that these companies would somehow seek to profit off the lands without using the lands. Whatever they do, it must be “sustainable.”

How might a company make control of land profitable while also not using the land? The method is admittedly confusing, perhaps intentionally. They profit from “ecological performance” such as “conservation, restoration, or sustainable management.” These NACs would quantify and monetize these natural outputs (such as air or water). The best comparison would be using the air we breathe as a cryptocurrency of sorts. And, these natural assets that collectively belong to all of us would now belong to corporations run by what many would call environmental special interests.

Another feature of these new companies is that the land belonging to sovereign nations and private landowners alike can be subject to the control of NACs. Sovereign nations, such as the United States Government, can provide their lands to private investors, including those outside the United States. China, for example, may be able to invest in an NAC and effectively be a stakeholder in our national parks. Russia could assume control of lands currently leased to produce oil and place them off limits for future natural resource development.

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SEC Issues Vague Threats Against Everyone Involved in the GameStop Stock Saga

The Securities and Exchange Commission broke its silence Friday morning on the populist investor uprising that has sent the stock price of beleaguered retailer GameStop “to the moon,”warning everyone involved that they are watching… and, for the time being, not doing a whole lot else, it seems.

“The Commission will closely review actions taken by regulated entities that may disadvantage investors or otherwise unduly inhibit their ability to trade certain securities,” the joint statement from acting SEC Chair Allison Herren Lee and the three commissioners.

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