Jerry Moran: “I do not know if there are others of my colleagues who have been stockbrokers at some time in their life, but I was for…”

“I do not know if there are others of my colleagues who have been stockbrokers at some time in their life, but I was for 10 years. I have watched what has happened in the securities marketplace. The gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Dingell] is absolutely right: There are corporate abuses. Mr. KLINK, the gentleman from Pennsylvania, is also correct that the securities market itself is doing quite well. But the fact remains that there is an abuse within this industry that does need to be corrected. And it is focused primarily on those firms that provide the highest rate of growth to our economy, those firms that take the greatest risks, in the area of high-technology. Legent Corp., in Herndon, VA, now in Vienna, actually, they had a slight change in their earnings expectation, the stock dropped. Immediately they were hit with one of those strike lawsuits. They required 200,000 pages of documentation, many, many days of very valuable employee time was spent, and they wound up settling for $2 million in legal fees even though it was acknowledged it was a frivolous lawsuit.”