No freakin way. He has not stopped the illegal naked shorting by unscrupulous hedge funds and has shut down investigations in to same. (I’ll have to go look for a link to the story) but I wouldn’t trust this guy. The SEC has shown me nothing.
I’ve seen Cox on TV and he is sort of telegenic but not the best speaker. If McCain goes with a House member I would rather see Portman or Kasich. If either of them could deliver Ohio that would be a big break. Kasich’s TV show on Fox was pretty good as I recall. His voting record was quite conservative but he did break ranks with the GOP to support Clinton’s useless “crime bill” in 1994. That disturbs me.
Uh...he’s been consistent in his efforts to toughen up the naked short-selling regulations, and taken it on the chin from the funds for being “anti-free market” because of it. Of course, he’s not anti-free market at all. Just anti-fraud in the free market.
Remember, he’s only been there 3 years, and the director can’t issue edicts. He has to get a consensus...and many of the people he has to get to align are people who enacted the flawed quasi-regulations to begin with. Just last week, he finally got the lumbering bureaucracy there to do something about it. The new regulations close loopholes in his predeccor’s toothless regulations and define the practice as fraud.
The only stuff i’ve been able to google up that might have given you the impression he shut down an investigation involves the issuance of subpoenas to members of the press during the overstock.com investigation. Cox recalled the subpoenas because they were issued by the enforcement division without his knowledge or knowledge of the SEC’s general counsel. (Cox was in the hospital having surgery at the time.) He didn’t quash the subpoenas nor shut down the investigation. He put a hold on them. Wisely, I’d say. If you’re going to subpoena members of the press, you better be damn sure your ducks are in a row. He probably wanted to get his IV lines and stitches out before proceeding.