SEC’s Shortcomings Exposed by Madoff Fraud

SEC’s Shortcomings Exposed

Thank you, Bernie Madoff. I want to be the first to give you credit for the great service you’ve done for the investing public.

Your alleged misdeeds are so over the top, even for these times, that I think Congress might actually do something about the hopeless operation we know as the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Many have tried to get the point across in recent years that the SEC, which describes itself as “the investor’s advocate,” has been coming up a little short on advocacy. Not even its intrepid inspector general, David Kotz, could get much blood boiling with report after report over the past year describing an agency that was too cozy with Wall Street and too ineffectual to act when it found serious risks at a major brokerage firm. Make that former brokerage firm. (Jan. 8)