Stomach-Turner re Madoff

(c) 2009 F. Bruce Abel

If you want a pure "stomach-turner" if not page-turner, read the Executive Summary -- it is not your normal executive summary, as it goes into quite a lot of dirty-laundry detail, of the SEC's own investigation of its prior five investigations of Bernie Madoff. This is the face of Republicans putting into federal agencies people who themselves despise regulation. It is disgusting. And I notice that the sad, sad story started in the Clinton Administration, I believe.

Much more as things develop. Including the 22-page Executive Summary. Undoubtedly the full thing will come out in a few days.

As sad as it is, a case can be made for the poor fools at the SEC. How many of us (actually I count myself as one who would have understood, because I was introduced into the world of derivatives long ago) would have understood what in the heck Madoff was saying?

One of my answers to the high salaries on Wall Street is to mandate that the SEC pays higher salaries than anybody in the private sector. Then the shoe would be on the other foot. SEC'ers would be smarter than the industry.