Proposition 201 should be called ``The Attack of the Stock Swindlers.''
This initiative attacks your pension and retirement savings. It stops you from holding swindlers responsible and getting your money back.
If this initiative becomes law, people who have been cheated will have to put up a deposit for what could be millions of dollars before they can sue. That deposit is there to pay the cheaters' lawyers!
According to the Federal Trade Commission, Americans are losing $1,000,000,000 (one billion dollars) a year to investment swindlers. Securities fraud involving senior citizens has reached epidemic proportions. The last thing we need is an initiative that encourages more fraud.
If this initiative had been the law a few years ago, elderly victims who lost their savings in the Charles Keating Lincoln Savings and Loan swindle could not have gotten their money back in state court.
Advanced Micro Devices put up $25,000 to pass this initiative. They paid $34 million to settle claims that they had defrauded investors.
Adaptec, Inc. put up $50,000. Adaptec was sued for securities fraud and insider trading. They paid back millions to the investors who sued them.
Cadence Design Systems, Inc. put up $25,000. They were sued twice for securities fraud and insider trading. They paid more than $15 million to settle.
An executive of Seagate Technologies put up more than $136,000. He and his corporation have been repeatedly sued for fraud, insider trading, and deliberately misleading investors. They paid millions to investors to settle just one fraud case.
Another contributor is a Director of several corporations. One of those corporations pled guilty to defrauding the Department of Defense, and paid over $100 million in fines and penalties in lawsuits by the government, whistleblowers, and stockholders. Two of his other corporations paid $42 million to settle securities fraud suits against them.
Californians have their pension funds invested in stocks. These nest eggs are what tomorrow's retirees will count on.
Pension and retirement funds need more protection, not less.
Vote ``NO'' on Propositions 201 and 202.
HOWARD L. OWENS
Legislative Director, Congress of California
Seniors, Inc.