Politics in the Zeros

Apparently some are shocked, just shocked that Obama would appoint a Wall Street crony to pretend to enforce laws against Wall Street crime at the SEC. Matt Taibbi feigns shock to make a point. Couldn’t they have found someone who wasn’t a key figure in one of the most notorious scandals to hit the SEC [...]

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My first post here at Polizeros was about that Manhattan federal court judge who rejected a proposed settlement between the S.E.C. and Citigroup last November. The S.E.C. has just announced that it is changing its policy on some settlements. The Securities and Exchange Commission said on Friday that it was making a major change in [...]

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Did a clever SEC bait Goldman Sachs into compounding its legal problems with the “Kiss of Death” message? Sam Antar at White Collar Fraud thinks so. By releasing the news on Friday the SEC may have suckered Goldman into a hasty press release which may now be used against them. He also says Richard Simpson, [...]

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The report by the SEC’s inspector general says SEC examiners concluded four times between 1997 and 2004 that Mr. Stanford’s businesses were fraudulent, but each time decided not to go further. It singles out the former head of the SEC’s enforcement office in Fort Worth, Texas, accusing him of repeatedly quashing Stanford probes and then [...]

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They say it only applies in Texas but, oopsie, the announcement went out on all their statements nationwide. A recent SEC proclamation does the same for money market accounts. Restricting demand deposits in a way that makes it unclear when people will have access to their funds – especially since they need daily access to [...]

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Why am I not surprised that the utterly compromised SEC somehow has not gotten around to instituting needed reforms. Watch what they (and the rest of the Obama Administration) do on financial reform, which so far has bee virtually nothing, rather than what they say, which is endless promise of reform that never seems to [...]

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The SEC sure has a sense of humor. With everyone screaming for the agency’s blood unless it does something to curb rampant and blatantly speculative high frequency trading, as well as to tighten insider trading regulation, what does the Mary Schapiro-lead circus do? Just the opposite. and even as the commission is weeping that its [...]

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U.S. securities investigators raised repeated concern over how Bernard Madoff could be running an honest business, but never followed through on the many red flags they uncovered. Hundreds of documents released on Friday by U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s portray an agency at times skeptical or dismissive of evidence that the now imprisoned mastermind of [...]

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This is Adam Storch, the just appointed COO of the SEC enforcement division. I know, you’re thinking, he’s not old enough to shave, has no experience in this kind of enforcement, and isn’t isn’t even a licensed broker. But you’re forgetting his most important qualification. He’s a Goldmanite and apparently has enjoyed a speedy rise [...]

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Gosh, I’m sure he must have the needed experience and toughness or else they wouldn’t have hired him. PS SEC officials who missed Madoff are living large. And you probably thought they were fired or at least disciplined, right?

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