ShmoopTube

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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