SEC and Mary Jo White

She is a perfect example of the revolving door between Wall Street and Government regulators, and she has such a mass of conflicts of interest that she shouldn't have ever been considered, but instead she now heads the SEC, government watchdog of the markets.  Mister President, if you're listening, this stinks.

She has servered all the titans, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, GE - you name it she served them, but now she says she'll make them toe the line.  Uh Huh.  In an article on Truthout Mark Karlin says  

"Mary Jo White will be collecting $42,000 a month in retirement pay for life from Debevoise & Plimpton. As Bloomberg reported, “This means she has a direct interest in Debevoise’s future profits, and therefore an incentive to help make sure only good things come the firm’s way. Debevoise’s partner-retirement plan is unfunded, meaning the firm pays benefits from its continuing business operations.”

"The New York Times reports that White and her husband, who’s also a corporate litigator, have a net worth of at least $16 million and investments that might be valued as high as $35 million. Now, courtesy of President Obama, Mary Jo White’s been named to head the SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission — the very agency that regulates her clients and everyone else doing business in the stock market."

 

Small Enough to Jail

Well sometimes a financial company isn't too big to jail, so we can create a category of Small Enough to Jail I guess.  The latest is SAC Capital. 

Jon Horvath, a former analyst at SAC Capital Advisors LP who pleaded guilty to passing illegal tips to one manager at the hedge fund, also funneled inside information to another supervisor, U.S. regulators said in a lawsuit that may help accelerate the massive criminal investigation of SAC and its founder, Steven A. Cohen.

SAC yesterday agreed to pay a record $616 million to settle SEC allegations that Sigma and another affiliate, CR Intrinsic Investors, made illegal trades using nonpublic information. SAC and the affiliates didn’t admit or deny wrongdoing in the accord. Cohen hasn’t been sued personally by the SEC or charged with a crime.  

Horvath’s illegal tips helped SAC earn more than $6.4 million in profit and avoided losses, according to the SEC complaint filed yesterday.  The SEC filing cited some of the same internal e-mails that were included as evidence in the criminal trial against two of Horvath’s co-defendants, Level Global Investors LP co-founder Anthony Chiasson and former Diamondback Capital Management LLC portfolio manager Todd Newman. They were convicted in December and await sentencing.

SEC nominee made millions defending banksters

I think this story should get the "aw shit" award of the week. 

Mary Jo White has made millions representing the banksters during the financial meltdown making her a blatant conflict of interest, and now she is Obama's choice for head of the SEC. She is of course lauded by Forbes (representing the creme de la creme of Wall Street) and they chortle about the alternative, "While in some cases lawyers do not manage the transition well or wisely, what is the alternative to professional movement:  career government lawyers chained to their desks?  Could we attract talented lawyers to public service without the freedom to reenter private practice?  Would we want government lawyers who represented only one side for their entire careers?".  (Translated:  "Yeah, we went to the dark side, but we're good at what we do.")

She doesn't have my confidence at all.

SEC maintaining tradition of corruption

The SEC is supposed to protect the general public from corrupt billionaires, not the other way around.