By Eliot Spitzer
Posted Thursday, Jan. 22, 2009
Although everybody claims to love the market, nobody really likes the rough-and-tumble of competition that produces the essential "creative destruction" of capitalism.
At bottom, this abhorrence of competition and change are the common theme that binds together the near death of the American car industry, the collapse of the credit market, the implosion of the housing market, the SEC's disastrous negligence, the Madoff Ponzi scheme, and the other economic catastrophes of recent months.
Consider the examples of the SEC and GM, which would appear to have nothing to do with each other. The traditional critiques of the SEC have been that it was underfunded and didn't have up-to-date laws needed to regulate sophisticated financial transactions in evolving markets. That's not accurate.
The SEC is a gargantuan bureaucracy of 3,500 employees and a budget of $900 million—vast compared with the offices that actually did ferret out fraud in the marketplace. And the general investigative powers of the SEC are so broad that it needs no additional statutory power to delve into virtually any market activity that it suspects is improper, fraudulent, or deceptive.
After each business scandal (Enron, Wall Street analysts, Madoff …), the SEC claims a need for more money and statutory power, yet those don't help. The SEC has all the money and people and laws it needs. For ideological reasons, it just didn't want to do its job, and on the rare occasions when it did, it didn't know how.
Read on.
2 comments:
Scandalous or not, I wish Obama would use Spitzer's brain-we need it.
Your right PrissyPatriot as Americans we pretty much stoned Spitzer, kicked him out of his job and even attacked his wife. Let's see we did the same with Bill Clinton too. Our way of treating those who help are like we treated Jesus. Kill him and when in need ask for his help anyway as if he's just suppose to say ok. Spitzer like all humans made a mistake now my question is why on earth would he want to help the same Americans who stoned him? He's always been brilliant and was about to stop the Stock Market Crash. I read so many hateful comments about Spitzer and his wife it made me sick, as the same people saw no problem with Vitters, Foley, Craig and even Paster Haggard's actions.
Let's hope Spitzer is a more forgiving person then I am. I'm not like Bill Clinton who is always helping America but Americans talk about him like a dog until they need him. Me I'm just leave people alone and move on with my own life. Kick me once in the butt I'm finished with you.
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