Friday, April 23, 2010

Judging the SEC

"In challenging the combined wisdom of the SEC and 12 big Wall Street firms, US District Court Judge William H. Pauley III joins his colleague on the bench of the Southern District Court in New York, Jed Rakoff, who gave the commission fits last year as it tried to settle a case with Bank of America Corp. ... 'Closer scrutiny appears to be here.,' says Joseph Grundfest, a law professor at Stanford and former SEC commissioner. 'This is likely not to be viewed as a happy development at the SEC.' ... But the SEC and the banks decided last year that the firewall was no longer needed: Other protections had been put in place, they believed, to assure analysts' independence. ... After the 'April 2003 headlines regarding the "Global Research Analyst Settlement" had faded,' the judge wrote in a 2009 ruling, 'the SEC as well as these defendants were indifferent to the mechanics of restitution'," my emphasis. Nathan Koppel & Ashby Jones at the WSJ, 20 March 2010, link:

Did the SEC and the banks decide? Or did the SEC take orders?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Ho ho IA...

Is the SEC as captured by Wall Street as the OTS was by WaMu?

Maybe...