Because of a paper-pushing snafu, President Obama's vile pick to head the SEC wasn't officially seated until four days after outgoing Clown Prince of Finance Chris Cox had resigned.According (subscription required) to The Wall Street Journal, "After lawmakers unanimously approved her appointment on Jan. 22, they realized that the paperwork had Ms. Schapiro's five-year term starting from June, rather than straight away. This meant that Ms. Schapiro wasn't technically in charge of the regulatory agency until the paperwork was corrected and the Senate confirmed her, again, on Monday evening."
Think about this: If the Washington apparatus of government can't file the paperwork to seat the new SEC head without bungling, how can we possibly count on them to protect investors from predators like Bernie Madoff and Citigroup (NYSE: C). Methinks this little screw-up is a very, very bad omen for the future of the SEC -- a metaphor for bureaucratic ineptitude worthy of Ibsen and Arthur Miller.
In fairness, we should give Ms. Schapiro a chance to prove her ineffectiveness before we judge her. But she spent her time as head of FINRA pursuing few enforcement cases and if she leads the SEC anything like she led that self-regulatory agency, we are all in trouble.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
1-27-2009 @ 1:28PM
Yon said...
SEC ??? What SEC ??? The one that let Madoff pocket the money for decades?
1-27-2009 @ 2:48PM
BHarrison said...
Let's get "real" . . . as noted previously, Madoff and the derivative FRAUDS occurred with a Chairman in place . . . what good did that Chairman do? It is all meaningless until Congress drafts and passes legislation implementing prudent and reasonable REGULATIONS and effective oversight to ensure that the corporate financial reports are reasonably accurate and have INTEGRITY. No prudent person is going to invest in a manipulated, corrupt markets/funds that have no INTEGRITY in their financial reports. All that has been unequivocally proven is that our financial institutions, and our major corporations and the markets/funds are corrupt to the core of each of them.
CONGRESS is the PRIMARY CULPRIT in having allowed and tacitly enabled all f these FRAUDS to be orchestrated and perpetuated. Now we have BOTH the CORRUPT Congressmen and CEOs heading up the "recovery efforts' . . . which is a total SHAM. Perhaps this FRAUDLENT ECONOMY and ECONOMIC STRUCTURE is TOO BIG to be turned around . . . god help us if that is the case.
1-27-2009 @ 2:54PM
BHarrison said...
The only thing that can effectively "save our nation" is to select people for these key positions who will do whatever is required to clean out the CORRUPTION and to instill INTEGRITY in the financial accounting and operations of the FIs and the corporations . . . and the markets and funds. Without that, the CORRUPTION will continue on . . . that is just the nature of politics and business. Frankly I doubt that we have the Congressmen who would be willing to do this; and Obama cannot do it on his own. (And Ms Schapiro isn't exactly THAT type of individual either . . . her past hstory stands on its own in regard to her diligence and inability to accomplish what needs to be done. Nor is the new head of the Treasury/IRS.)