DISQUS

caphillprof · 1 year ago

If you go to Judiciary Square, Homeland Security has removed the street parking from three sides of building, presumably because the SEC is scared of a car bomb. Yet had a car bomb actually demolished the building and, for sake of argument, wiped out the SEC staff, our current situation would be no different.

I say bring back the parking.

Soundboy_jeff_meanie · 1 year ago

now now... don't give the republican money laundering machine and ideas.

Older_Wiser · 1 year ago

"Madoff with my money" did nothing that Wall St. didn't do with "securitized" mortgages and other CDOs, including credit default swaps.

It's painful, though, that organizations like Doctors for Human Rights lost everything, but they bought into his rhetoric about high yields, just as others did.

Doesn't anyone have any sense about investing these days? I guess it's just part of the American style of instant gratification. No one is willing to wait for anything anymore, it seems, but they're willing to make others suffer for their own greed.

mrtodd · 1 year ago

here's another gem from the FT on Maddow

http://mrbloggington.blogspot.com/2008/12/audit...

mrtodd · 1 year ago

haha i mean Madoff! sorry rachel

dances with beagles · 1 year ago

"...concerned by the apparent failures over at least a decade..."

shorter interpretation: It's Clinton's fault.

Palolo lolo · 1 year ago

The talking heads on CNN this morning were all ASTOUNDED that the regulators had missed this,
after all that has happened thus far. Wasn't that the whole point of appointing Cox? And all the rest of the Bush mal-administration regulatory appointments?
Something about foxes and hen houses.

Cpeterka · 1 year ago

HOW'S THAT REPUBLICAN " LET THE MARKETS REGULATE THEMSELVES" THING WORKING FOR YA ?

tbhull · 1 year ago

Absent the SEC's active complicity with the fraud, lawsuits will get nowhere against the SEC.

cab02149 · 1 year ago

As long as 10 years ago, leading Wall Street investors analyzed Madoffs investments and concluded he was in a Ponzi Skeme. They warned the SEC by mail in 1989. Please accept this: the SEC was intentionally set up to be weak. Wall street has never been humble. They run the country.

The Madoff failure will shed light on the epidemic of shady deals permeating Wall Street, and how these are done. Will action to prevent these again, be taken by the government? Hell No. They will cave in to "You are interfering in the action of the market".

If Washington would put the NSA to tap into wall street as it has to the American public, perhaps something close to useful would occur.

gonzalez · 1 year ago

Wit all this shit going on created by the corrupt republicans, what is amazing is that there are still republicans out there! How lame are they?

EmGD · 1 year ago

Why would the SEC need to conduct any oversight, it's not like that's their job. It is? Oh. Well why would they need to conduct it on Madoff? He was well respected, had friends everywhere, and was powerful, that means he'll police himself. He didn't? Well, uhhh......LOOK OVER THERE!

http://thesebastards.blogspot.com/

JamesR · 1 year ago

How hard, really, are ponzie schemes to spot? If you look. (If you've received warnings about a possible one for ten years...?)

I am not an expert, but I have seen MLM seminar type ponzie frauds tempt friends - and it's really kinda simple - if something doesn't PRODUCE ANYTHING but more new customers, um, that's the definition of ponzie. Enron produced NOTHING save heartache and ruin, existing only as a parasite enabled by these same people. At the beginning of Bush's destruction. Perpetual Motion doesn't work in physics and not in money either. If it looks too good then probably it's bad. Even though the SEC never looked that good and is in fact bad... Heck of a job Coxie.

Thank God Bush only got a Masters degree in Business, if he'd gotten a Doctorate we'd all be really screwed.

EsmeK · 1 year ago

Why is Cox so upset now? He doesn't believe in regulation-- that's why he was appointed. He made the point very clearly in the outstanding series This American Life did called "Planet Money." See this review (which includes links to lots of over coverage of how Cox not only dropped the ball; he never wanted the ball in the first place)
http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/npr_leads_on_sec.p...

Soundboy_jeff_meanie · 1 year ago

I wonder if this whole thing explains why Bill Frist isn't in jail for SEC violations... it looked like the basis was there, and then... *poof!*, Bill Frist sorta fades into the background without even a slap on the wrist.

NovaNardis · 1 year ago

Maybe McCain was right about firing Chris Cox? Although I'm sure this wasn't the reason Johnny Mac had in mind.

Soundboy_jeff_meanie · 1 year ago

probably not... when the market tanks, cindy makes more money as people can only afford cheap beer.

muffler · 1 year ago

Notice once again that the senior Bush administration has an excuse! The "Who could have anticipated this?" quote is due any minute. Well I say we put them all in jail and let the prisoners sort them out one by one. Enough for the white collar crimes. If ONE person dies because they have nothing left to cover the medical procedures they need then Madoff should be tried on accessory to murder or homicide. Let that one stick a little.

beware of the leopard · 1 year ago

He throws his staff under the bus because he got caught with his free-market pants down. From the reports I've read the SEC has had warnings about Maddof for ten years, but political pressure and idealogy have been the real causes of this fraud which "nobody saw coming" (HA!). Of course, none of the financial mess will be cleaned up by prosecuting the perpetrators, or by re-regulating the various markets because it 's all quite apparent that the bulk of the appointments to powerful Cabinet positions have gone to the usual DC, neo-liberal free-market religionists. The few so-called "green" or "progressive" appointments go to Chu and Browner, et al, to mollify us chumps who still think that Obama had our interests in mind when we elected him. Vilsack's appointment is an especially bitter pill to swallow: the cretin is a complete tool of Monsanto and Dow/ Pioneer, Con-Agra, ADM, Bunge, Cargill, etc. GMO's? You'll eat it and like it. Genetic drift? A cost of doing business. Unregulated CAFO's? Hey, it costs money to treat animal waste producing the waste-stream equivalent of a city of 100,000 people. So, ya' know, tough it out. Mountain-top removal dump-the effluent-in-a-stream coal mining? Ha, if you want electricity, you had better do as we say. Or else.

TimmyB. · 1 year ago

When Cox was in Congress, he was responsible for the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, which made it much more difficult for shareholders to sue companies when they were defrauded. He has always been trying to make sure financial fraudsters escape unpunished.

And as head of the SEC, nothing changed.