Comments on: Should Mary Schapiro save the SEC or shut it down? http://business.time.com/2008/12/17/should-mary-schapiro-save-the-sec-or-shut-it-down/ The latest news and commentary on the economy, the markets, and business Sun, 24 Mar 2013 00:00:12 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: waltfrench http://business.time.com/2008/12/17/should-mary-schapiro-save-the-sec-or-shut-it-down/#comment-5533 Fri, 19 Dec 2008 06:02:44 +0000 http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/?p=3636#comment-5533 Isn’t this notion of saying, “Caveat investor” pretty much like telling people that the police can’t prevent all crimes, so we should all be carrying concealed weapons?

We don’t really have to resign ourselves to the systematic indifference that Bush foisted on the US in the name of “free markets.”

The Wild West must have been fun in lots of ways, but it hardly seems like the framework for governing the capital markets that we depend on.

]]> By: sparrowshead http://business.time.com/2008/12/17/should-mary-schapiro-save-the-sec-or-shut-it-down/#comment-5532 Thu, 18 Dec 2008 21:54:21 +0000 http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/?p=3636#comment-5532 Actually, I’m not sure even the Easter Bunny would do a worse job that Chris Cox. I hope Schapiro can sorts things out, but my suspicion is that the rot in the SEC is so severe they should just shut the whole thing down.

http://subprimeshowtime.com/2008/12/18/time-to-disband-the-sec/

]]> By: plukasiak http://business.time.com/2008/12/17/should-mary-schapiro-save-the-sec-or-shut-it-down/#comment-5531 Thu, 18 Dec 2008 18:08:27 +0000 http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/?p=3636#comment-5531 Did the stock market rise or fall when Schapiro’s name was announced? If it rose, she the wrong person for the job — if it dropped a couple of hundred points, she can be expected to do what is necessary.

]]> By: Andy from MA http://business.time.com/2008/12/17/should-mary-schapiro-save-the-sec-or-shut-it-down/#comment-5530 Thu, 18 Dec 2008 16:31:56 +0000 http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/?p=3636#comment-5530 Justin you wrote “Bad stuff is going to happen from time to time, especially after a long period of benign financial conditions that rewarded the Pollyannas and punished the skeptics in the private sector.”
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Bad stuff? Do you read and edit before posting? Bad stuff is a market correction. This is catastrophic “stuff.”
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Let’s throw the baby out with the bathwater here and kill the SEC. The SEC has worked fine up until 1980 when the wave of deregulation began in our government with the Reagan administration.
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Give me a freaking break Justin!

]]> By: rrsafety http://business.time.com/2008/12/17/should-mary-schapiro-save-the-sec-or-shut-it-down/#comment-5529 Thu, 18 Dec 2008 15:06:33 +0000 http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/?p=3636#comment-5529 Considering she was in charge of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, couldn’t she have done something about Madoff or is it just a phoney-baloney authority?

]]> By: odograph http://business.time.com/2008/12/17/should-mary-schapiro-save-the-sec-or-shut-it-down/#comment-5528 Thu, 18 Dec 2008 12:02:25 +0000 http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/?p=3636#comment-5528 I don’t know, this seems an odd piece Justin. I think the problem you are citing is as old as cops. Cops can always get too cosy, or a little bent. We don’t say “let’s get rid of the cops.” We just try to figure oversight & etc. to make it work. (It is a dynamic tension, as I believe Tom Robbins said “between the crime problem, and the cop problem”.)

]]> By: barracho http://business.time.com/2008/12/17/should-mary-schapiro-save-the-sec-or-shut-it-down/#comment-5527 Thu, 18 Dec 2008 09:56:27 +0000 http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/?p=3636#comment-5527 i can name at least three people who have forgotten more about securities–and commodities futures and options–regulation than mary schapiro will ever learn.

what, did you read a press release or something?

gimme a break.

]]> By: banzai7 http://business.time.com/2008/12/17/should-mary-schapiro-save-the-sec-or-shut-it-down/#comment-5526 Thu, 18 Dec 2008 08:49:39 +0000 http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/?p=3636#comment-5526 There are many facets to this. The main problem, however, is big business’ ability to proselytize the Washington political establishment into buying into industry self regulation. This is a principal that simply never works on Wall Street.

The next problem is the SECs formalistic approach to regulation. The Code of Federal Regulations is crammed full of SEC gobbledgook that in the end did little to protect the integrity of the financial markets. Billions of pages of no action letters, interpretations, archaic definitions, boilerplate. What we need is a regulator with street smarts and the ability to look at function as opposed to form.

Legal/financial innovation is a euphemism for designing PONZIESQUE loopholes. This kind of activity (centered in structured finance) required mathematicians with law degrees. What a dangerous combination. Form prevails over substance in this universe unless someone has the ability to say, you know what, I just connected the dots and what you are doing with these synthetic CDOs and credit default swaps is one big PONZI Scheme!

Nicholas Nassim Taleb says have to seriously delever(according to him this has only started). In his new world of finance bankers will be marginalized and the concept of wealth generation will revert to the generation of real earnings as opposed to the inflation of asset values. When this happens, the role of the SEC will be further marginalized. The lightweights at the SEC certainly lack the financial street smarts I am referring to.

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