Moreover, sustainability reporting considered, the investor did not understand that these cleaner investment products cause them, to incur more costs due to the increased costs of future environmental remedial costs. These costs include the cost to restore and replace flows, enhance consciousness of surrounding communities, and expensive remedial and protective Pond and Maher remediation expenses.

In recognition of these concerns and in efforts to address the concerns of investors, the SEC began in 2003, the sustainability reporting required financial participants to provide information about the material components of their products and the potential adverse environmental impacts of these products.

Knowledgeable representatives of the securities industry agree with this approach. On the surface, the rule sounds reasonable. The Securities Industry Association has expressed support. So from the standpoint of an industry interest, like that of an investor, the SEC is on solid ground.

But the real problem with the new SEC regulations is not in their scope, but in the implication of their logic. The new sustainability reporting regulations apparently repeat the mistake of the Commission in 1999, which failed to achieve its goal of regulating exchange-traded funds. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Division of the Labor Department, produced a regulation in 2000 that attempted to achieve the same objective, but it fell just short.

For one thing, as this rule is codified at a regulatory level, there may well be statutory barriers to application of this regulation. Commodity Futures Trading Commission brink at SEC regulations, by Agency, sustainability reporting, included in part.

1. Market quotations must be prepared in accordance with practical, and such type of quotes made by employees of a dealer or dealing club and acknowledged by the Service and also with options for the purchase or sale of goods as permitted by section 31 in this section.

2. The expenses of a dealer or dealing club, the costs of which may fluctuate annually, if not prepared in accordance with practical, such costs must be identified and all costs associated with the transactions of the economic nature must be an entire sustainability reporting.

It is a far cry from practical and appropriate. The costs of obtaining a general market quotation are impractical and needless to explain simply because the information sought is essentially to determine the price of a certain security, as if the transaction were actually occurring at that time.

3. Nothing in this rule change should in any way alter the principle basis of rule upheld by the securities laws.

Instead, this regulation simply states that an issuing party must identify and disclose all of the essential material features of sustainability reporting. And that, as one general rule, all material risk factors relating to the security must be disclosed. Thus, it leaves nothing to chance, does it? Articles of obligations proposed bond offerings, conservation rights, market- makers, unaffordable liquidity requirements on hedging and other transactions are thus not required to be disclosed.

This regulation marks the end of the official SEC pretending to regulate itself in a sheepish attempt to appear credible to the markets. It certainly is intended by sustainability reporting and their contractors for any failure.

The only other provision of the rule may have some usefulness for professionals in the securities markets who are occasional issuers. It makes read them if they do not complete the annual due diligence requirements. This provision may enable issuers to avoid the costly registration requirements imposed by the SEC in a recently enacted securities law.

But I think it is a mistake to think of any provision of this rule as anything other than a serious concession on the part of market participants to fully disclose risks in sustainability reporting, or else to restrict their activities. Not only is this facility not a useful tool, but the costs of implementing it would be very large.

The current rule makes no mention of the fact that standard disclosures are available in sustainability reporting documents.