1934 Securities Exchange Act

Finance a la shmoop what is the SEC right well the SEC or

Securities Exchange Commission has nothing to do with a realtor getting 6% [Realtor receiving a cheque off a man]

Commission when they sell your house commission here is about committing to

do right by investors well why do we have a whole commission or army of [An army of men wearing suits and facepaint]

lawyers dedicated to the fair exchange of securities well because there was an

era brutally demonstrated in the 1920's when fast-talking sleazy wheelers and dealers

ripped off everyone from ma and pa kettle to aunt an uncle teapot yeah they would [Dealer ripping off people in the street]

prey upon the uneducated the uninformed the gullible the greedy painting stories

of great riches that the would-be investors could have if they just sold [Man telling a farmer to invest his land]

their twenty thousand acre farm and parted with ten grand to buy this

beautiful park that real estate developers wanted to turn into high-rise [Farmer receives a real-estate development]

condos but in fact many of those lands were actually swampland the only folks [Farmer holding a shovel in a swampland]

who might be moving in there were beavers deer flies and alligators and it

wasn't just real estate securities that were abused fake companies Lego bridge [Officer on stage waving baton]

building company bumper stickers R Us you know like that sprung up everywhere

with crazy promises that sounded plausible to those with barely a [Boy in a white vest beside a bumper sticker]

third-grade education but they were total scams the American public tired of

reading about uneducated investors losing all their money to fast talking [American man reading about investors]

sales people lobbied Congress to create the SEC in 1934 with its core pursuit [People protesting outside of congress]

being to regulate the buying and selling of securities in America yep pretty much

[Policeman blows his whistle] these were the investing police myriad laws and structures were put into place

mainly around full and fair disclosure of whatever security a money raising

company was selling that is if it really was swampland you had to disclose that [Man with an aligator for a head in a swampland]

it was swampland you couldn't claim it was something it wasn't using fancy

vocabulary that a normal ordinary person couldn't [Man confusing someone with fancy vocabulary]

understand like you couldn't you know polish a piece of crap and call it

marble the broader goal here was not to give Americans advice on what to buy and [American boy thinking about buying or selling]

sell but rather just to have full and fair disclosure of the facts so that

when a buyer did buy and got taken well at least then all the facts she needed [Woman meeting with an investor]

to make a rational and reasonable conclusion were right there in front of

her so hey anyone up for a game of marbles [Man throwing poo on the floor]