Posted on 09/06/2009 9:59:59 AM PDT by n-tres-ted
That Bernard Madoff’s multi-billion dollar fraud flourished for many years under the nose of the Securities & Exchange Commission is a powerful indictment of the SEC as a complicit handmaiden of Wall Street corruption of enormous scale. The SEC Inspector General, who is supposed to be autonomous but strangely must submit his reports directly to the agency he is required to watchdog, has been investigating how this so-called specialty regulator managed to miss such rampant fraud for so long. On September 2, the SEC released an “executive summary” of 22 pages signed by the IG David Kotz August 31. Its concluding statements are: “despite numerous credible and detailed complaints, the SEC never properly examined or investigated Madoff’s trading and never took the necessary, but basic, steps to determine if Madoff was operating a Ponzi scheme. Had these efforts been made with appropriate follow-up at any time beginning in June of 1992 until December, 2008, the SEC could have uncovered the Ponzi scheme well before Madoff confessed.”
(Excerpt) Read more at classicalcapital.com ...
I dont know how much of it is outright corruption, how much is indifference, and how much is SEC lawyers auditioning for jobs at the law firms where they really want to work. But what does it matter, the point is that the agency is useless for protecting investors from crooks.
OK for 10 Xtra Credit Points... Who was the first “Chairman” of the “SEC”?
Ted's dad?
Didn’t FDR say it takes a crook to catch a crook?
BINGO YOU WIN!
Yes, FDR said something like that. Which means neither that what he said was true, nor that he even intended for a crook to be caught. After sifting through the tricky language, the historical fact is that he put a crook in charge so neither that crook nor any other big crook would ever be bothered.
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