As world financial order tumbles, Wall Street tires of accountability

11:55p ET Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

Having brought the international financial system nearly to its knees by foisting unregulated junk derivatives on an unsuspecting world, Wall Street is rebelling against regulation, transparency, and accountability. The rebellion is laid out in the Wall Street Journal story appended here, which describes the new private stock markets under development. Look for the Brooklyn Bridge IPO to open at $12.

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

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Three Firms Join
Private System
To Trade Stocks

By Kevin Kingsbury
The Wall Street Journal
Thursday, September 13, 2007

Three financial-services companies have joined a group of Wall Street firms, creating a rival venue to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s private system to trade the stocks of companies that don't want the scrutiny and regulatory burdens of going public.

Bank of America Corp., Credit Suisse Group, and UBS AG will participate in the Open Platform for Unregistered Securities. The system was established last month by Citigroup Inc., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co., Morgan Stanley, and Bank of New York Mellon Corp., and is known as Opus-5.

Bank of New York Mellon will act as administrator of the system, which is intended to "promote liquidity and efficiency for qualified institutional buyers" that trade unregistered equity securities "and enhance issuers' capital-raising efforts."

When the Wall Street firms announced Opus-5 last month, they said more securities firms were expected to participate over time and the market was set to launch in September. Goldman unveiled its GS TRuE system, short for Goldman Sachs Tradable Unregistered Equity, in May.

These markets will generally be closed to individual investors. Goldman's market is open only to institutional investors with assets of more than $100 million. The systems reflect a business-community backlash against increased regulation of public-company accounting practices.

Also last month, Bear Stearns Cos. announced its own private-placement platform for unregistered equity securities.

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