was originally scheduled to run until July 2009, but was extended through October of that year. Japan's Finance Minister, Shōichi Nakagawa stated, "We decided (to move up the short-selling ban) as we thought it could be dangerous for the Tokyo stock market if we do not take action immediately." Nakagawa added that Japan's Financial Services Agency would be teaming with the Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission and Tokyo Stock Exchange to investigate past violations of Japanese regulations on stock short-selling. The ban was subsequently extended through October 2010. Singapore The Singapore Exchange started to penalize naked short sales with an interim measure in September, 2008. These initial penalties started at $100 per day. In November, they announced plans to increase the fines for failing to complete trades. The new penalties would penalize traders who fail to cover their positions, starting at $1,000 per day. There would also be fines for brokerages who fail to use the exchange's buying-in market to cover their positions, starting at $5,000 per day. The Singapore exchange had stated that the failure to deliver shares inherent in naked short sales threatened market orderliness. United States Securities Exchange Act of 1934 The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 stipulates a settlement period up to two business days before a stock needs to be delivered, generally referred to as "T+2 delivery". Regulation SHO The SEC enacted Regulation SHO in January 2005 to target abusive naked short selling by reducing failure to deliver securities, and by limiting the time in which a broker can permit failures to deliver. In addressing the first, it stated that a broker or dealer may not accept a short sale order without having first borrowed or identified the stock being sold. The rule had the following exemptions: Broker or dealer accepting a short sale order from another registered broker or dealer Bona fide market making Broker-dealer effecting a sale on behalf of a customer that is deemed to own the security pursuant to Rule 200 through no fault of the customer or the broker-dealer. To reduce the duration for which fails to deliver are permitted to sit open, the regulation requires broker-dealers to close out open fail-to-deliver positions in threshold securities that have persisted for 13 consecutive settlement days. The SEC, in describing Regulation SHO, stated that failures to deliver shares that persist for an extended period of time "may result in large delivery obligations