SEC Chief Mum on Market; Agency Begins Gathering Data

WASHINGTON — 

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Richard C. Breeden, sworn in only two days ago, was holed up in his office taking conference calls Friday and unavailable for comment on the steep market plunge.

Telephone lines to his office were jammed. Assistants said they did not know whether the chairman would issue a statement.

But the new chairman already is on record opposing SEC intervention to close markets in the event of a crash.

“I would not consider such a step,” Breeden said during his confirmation hearings before the Senate Banking Committee last month.

Market regulation officers were busy trying to collect information on how well the markets handled the decline.

“We’re in an information-gathering mode right now. It’s probably premature to comment right now,” said Stephen Luperello, an SEC branch chief for stocks.

Asked during his confirmation hearings what he would do if the market plummeted 500 points the day after he took office, Breeden told the Senate Banking Committee that, “at a minimum,” he and his staff would remain in close contact with the exchanges.

The New York Stock Exchange has already adopted a “circuit breaker,” in which trading would be temporarily halted if the Dow dropped more than 250 points in one day’s trading.