Category: Business

Lawmakers Criticize Role of SEC in Madoff Scheme – WSJ.com:

“‘You are both a captive regulator and a failed regulator,’ Harry Markopolos said of the SEC in highly anticipated testimony to a U.S. House subcommittee.
Mr. Markopolos detailed his nine-year effort to alert federal regulators about Madoff, who is accused of engineering one of the largest swindles in U.S. history. The SEC was ‘unable to understand’ the complex financial instruments involved in the alleged fraud, Mr. Markopolos said, and regulators weren’t interested in pursuing investigations against influential firms and investors.”

(Via Wall Street Journal Online.)

Whistleblower ignored. Surprise, surpirse. This is what you get when you have people who hate government, running government. The SEC had no defense either on this.

The group of SEC officials declined to speak specifically about the Madoff case, but said they were doing their best to protect investors.
“I think I speak for everyone when I say we hate fraud,” said Linda Thomsen, director of the SEC’s division of enforcement, said.
Lawmakers, however, weren’t impressed.
“Your job is to prevent fraud, not to hate it,” Mr. Kanjorski said, alternately describing the SEC’s testimony as “oatmeal” and a “traveler’s guide” that didn’t address the issues exposed by the Madoff case.

Bam!

The Word – Mad Men | Wednesday November 19 | ColbertNation.com:

“”

(Via The Colbert Nation.)

Steve brings the moneytheism gospel.

Op-Ed Columnist – How to Fix a Flat – NYTimes.com:

“‘In return for any direct government aid,’ he wrote, ‘the board and the management [of G.M.] should go. Shareholders should lose their paltry remaining equity. And a government-appointed receiver — someone hard-nosed and nonpolitical — should have broad power to revamp G.M. with a viable business plan and return it to a private operation as soon as possible.”

(Via NY Times.)

Amen. Been saying this for all government bailouts. Incompetence should not be rewarded and put in charge of fixing itself.

What Will Wall Street Look Like in the Fall of 2009? — New York Magazine:

“And while any president will be an improvement over the current one, there is a growing belief on Wall Street that Barack Obama has the capacity to lead us out of this wilderness while John McCain does not. I’ll go a step further: Obama is a recession. McCain is a depression.
Wall Street usually favors Republicans when it comes to managing the economy, but this time around the financial community is skeptical. John McCain has done everything he can to avoid talking about the economy, lest he be tarred with the brush of George Bush’s ineptitude. And when McCain has attempted to step into the fray, he’s been far from reassuring. First, he insisted that the fundamentals of the economy were sound; then he turned around and told us it was the end of the economic world as we know it, and suspended his campaign to scramble back to Washington and save the day on the bailout bill—only to have little visible effect. For all his talk of being a maverick, McCain looks an awful lot like President Bush on the credit crisis: He doesn’t seem to understand Wall Street or Main Street, he is dogmatically anti-regulation, and his economic team is a joke. “

(Via New York Magazine.)

Boo yah!!!