Running With The Big Dogs: Sybil Norcroft Book Six Read Online Free PDF Page B

a national emergency and caused a lowgrade panic among the citizenry, it was amazing how rapidly change could be brought to pass by an aroused public. Americans are slow to anger, and reluctant to make large changes; but, in contrast to their usual apathy and contrariness, the members of the American democracy are very good at reacting positively to a real crisis.
    One aspect of the lack of smoothness was the irate response by some citizens and their political representatives as diverse as the hard-core unionists and pension fund managers in the East and the Tea-Party diehards in the Southeast and West of the Great Plains. The president and vice-president, Sybil Norcroft, Frank Margoles, Speaker Sengupta, and Senate Majority Leader Randolph Coombs bore the brunt of a firestorm of criticism. However, this time—unlike the previous most unpopular measures championed by many of the same national leaders to gain control of the H 5 N 1 influenza pandemic—the federal and state officials did not disagree in private with the measures to save the country; so, no impeachment movement gained momentum. However, there were very serious threats made against any and everyone who was responsible for the extremely unpopular austerity measures. Sybil Norcroft, former neurosurgeon, and Georgetown wife and mother was shortly to learn the degree to which those threats would be carried.
    SEC Enforcement Division Office, SEC Headquarters, 100 F Street, NE, Washington, D.C.,
November 12, 2019, 1000 hrs
    The daily reports from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange bored most of the SEC agents because they were monotonous—day after day, the same bland reports of routine buying and selling. John Bridger Warden was different. He had the eye of a gem cutter and the soul of an accountant. He loved looking at the reports, and his greatest excitement in a given day was to find the discrepancy—the crime.
    November 12 started off as more than routine. Several Floor officials at the NYSE had sent reports of suspicious activity to the MSD [Market Surveillance Division] of the exchange—the regulation division responsible for monitoring trading activities on the floor and the records of trading by member firms of NYSE-listed securities. The MSD flagged a series of what appeared likely to be trading abuses and recommended formal investigation by the NYSE Regulation’s Enforcement Division. Randy St. James in enforcement flagged over 100 highly suspicious short sales and sent his report on to the officer of the day, John Bridger Warden, with a note telling Agent Warden that NYSE was opening a formal investigation; and the SEC would likely want to be involved. He forwarded a copy of the report and the Regulation’s Enforcement Division’s preliminary findings and conclusions to the FBI.
    Warden poured over the raw data and referred frequently to the new SEC OCIE [Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations] Risk Alerts to detect and thereby to prevent options trading that circumvents SEC short-sale rules. He found 128 instances of options trading that seemed to have been executed for that very purpose. The regulation dubbed “SHO” tightened requirements for short sales of borrowed securities. Warden knew that short sales are legal and that short sellers are allowed to profit from price declines by replacing borrowed securities at a lower price.
    SHO required short sellers who fail to deliver securities after the settlement date to close out their position immediately, unless they qualify as bona fide market makers for a limited amount of extra time to close-out; and none of that day’s short sellers appeared to fall into that category. Agent Warden checked each trade against the regs to see if the trading strategies observed by the OCIE staff only gave the impression of satisfying the SHO “close-out requirement,” while in effect evading it. These 128 trades appeared to be sham close-outs that violate the SEC rule, which was written to