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To: verdad who wrote (129311)	5/27/2003 9:32:21 AM
From: Art Bechhoefer	Respond to of 152472

Verdad, it's true that many newcomers into investing have little experience and are susceptible to all kinds of advice, good and bad, easily obtainable on the Internet. Until the most recent settlement agreement, in which a couple of the worst offenders received major fines, SEC efforts to enforce EXISTING securities laws were concentrated mainly on one person, Jonathon Lebed, a teenager who gave out fictitious recommendations on penny stocks. Do you see my point? The SEC, until Eliot Spitzer appeared on the scene, was perfectly content to dump on little guys who couldn't fight back, while letting the big fish get away. The issue is very simple. Publicized advice, particularly from well known investment firms, amounts to nothing more than advertising and should be prosecuted vigorously if it is intentionally misleading. The best way to enforce these abuses is to prohibit any firm found guilty of promoting false advertising from doing business in the market. Do you think that SSB or Merrill Lynch would like being prohibited from doing business for a couple of years? If that happened, the practice of abuse would stop in a hurry. But if not, then it will be business as usual. Art