Rarely have I seen information that brought me so close to puking on my computer:
The headine in the News agency that shall not be named:
Madoff fund may have made no trades
It is now being reported that Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) noted:
no indication of any trading
And
no evidence of customer account statements being generated
by Madoff’s firm.
Even though the SEC was given numerous tips that not was all right at Madoff’s firm, they never stopped to ask to see trade statements or customer statements. This in spite of Madoff running a brokerage business that was showing consistent investment returns year after year.
As a former auditor, (I’m a recovering CPA), the SEC’s activity, or more properly lack of fundamental audit curiosity goes beyond negligence. It’s hard to believe even a junior auditor would make such a oversight not once, but on multiple occasions.
I was not enamored with much of McCain’s campaign. He failed to be aggressive when he needed to be, stuck his finger in the eye of conservatives unnecessarily and completely bungled calling a halt to his campaign to get involved in the original TARP authorization. I will however give kudos to McCain in calling out SEC Chairman Christopher Cox and called for his termination.
Well, I’ll capitulate and agree with you about Cox (finally!!)
Of course, the ENTIRE SEC management should go out the door with him; it’s not likely that Cox was the Boob-In-Charge (or is that Senior?) on the Madoff account.
I’ll agree that Cox wasn’t the investigator in charge. In fact, he took no personal accountability after the Maddox deal initially came to light but made sure “the dept.” took the heat:
http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2008/2008-297.htm
When the Titanic went down it wasn’t the guy on watch, the guy who missed the iceberg who took the heat, it was the Captain. The Captain was the guy who said “increase the speed, we don’t care about no stinking iceberg reports, we’re unsinkable.” Cox thought his group too, was unsinkable and paid no attention to all the “iceberg reports” along the way.
The analogy breaks down in that Captain Smith went down with his ship and died. Cox will likely get another cushy position somewhere. Even if he doesn’t, Cox will live a life of luxury for the rest of his years.
Yah, well, so will most of the execs from Bear, Lehman, BofA, Citi, etc.
I know. This is another time where I really see the wisdom of the old testament eye for an eye….all those folks should be made paupers as they did with so many of their employees, shareholders or constituents.