No Remorse

I saw this interview, more like a three year old’s tantrum, posted on the NYTimes. The former head of the SEC,(also known as the world’s most toothless agency), Arthur Levitt, says everything was A-OK under his watch.

If you had a cancer growing inside of you for two eight years, and your oncologist didn’t detect it, wouldn’t you think the oncologist was remiss? Wouldn’t you sue the oncologist in court?

Bernie Madoff flourished under Levitt’s watch, in addition to all sorts of questionable behavior that led to the big profits made by insiders during the dot-com bubble.

In the interests of fairness, here is an embarassingly laudatory article from the CPA review saying how good Levitt is. Notice it does not talk about any prosecutions the SEC made, or who they caught. It is saying ‘Thanks for the softball game, Mr. Levitt’. 

The SEC should be hated, it should be like a mean junkyard dog running around and biting Wall Street people. That is what a regulator does. It should not be a shill for Wall Street.

Update: Here is a nice article about Bernie Madoff, again from the NYTimes, being called a psychopath. It also says regulators and Bernie were very cozy-cozy.