Imaginary Problems: In a letter to shareholders (“Imaginary Problems: Who Really Benefits from Lower Regulatory Burdens?” February 2, 2012), Motley Fool mutual fund manager Bill Mann thoroughly debunks the premise behind a central plank of the JOBS Act, that American companies are finding it difficult to go public.  Mann warns that, on the contrary, proposals that roll back important investor protections threaten to destroy jobs.  “As international investors, we deal with lots of markets that are essentially or functionally closed to new companies. That would not include the United States,” he writes.  As evidence, he notes that 2011 was actually a very good year for IPOs, particularly in terms of dollar amount raised, and that “some companies were able to go public despite the absence of either a) meaningful revenues, or b) sustained profitability.” Mann adds that, “It wasn’t so long ago that the main requirement for a company to make it onto the stock market was to take a word and add ‘.com’ to it. The losses from that experience were in the hundreds of billions of dollars … No job creation will be generated through the process of socializing capital destruction to the general public.”

http://www.foolfunds.com/commentary/2012/02/letter-to-shareholders-february-2012.aspx