Oh, Please!

President Bush has nominated a "pro-business" candidate to head up the SEC. Give me a break. 

From my perspective, "pro-business" is synonymous with taking the heat off an entrenched and indignant Wall Street, angered because first NY US Attorney, Eliot Spitzer and then finally the SEC had the audacity to look into the lying, cheating and stealing that has become accepted Wall Street practice.  I saw Spitzer speak at a National Press Club breakfast last winter. In one of his highly publicized cases, Spitzer successfully prosecuted a star stock analyst and his big Wall street firm for issuing glowing "buy" opinions on a certain stock when in private emails the analyst derided the same stock. At the breakfast, Spitzer recounted how in his first meeting with the targets of his investigation,  lawyers did not say what he had come to expect defense lawyers to say, namely, that their clients didn't do what he alleged they did.  Instead, Spitzer said the lawyers said that everybody was doing it and that they had powerful friends.

This debate suggesting that Wall Street is struggling under the weight of too much regulation is a "red herring."  Investors need to really look at the nature of the wrongdoing caught up in enforcement actions thus far.  They were really bad deeds and not even close to gray area stuff. It was the kind of outright stealing that is just dead wrong.  And, what makes this worse, it was done by people who are already extremely wealthy, overcompensated masters of the universe who just felt they had the unfettered power to do as they please because nobody would look or, even if they did, have the nerve to stare them down.

Susan

Blog me back.  You must have a financial question or concern.  How about this?  I'd like to hear from anyone that owns a stock or fund and refuses to sell it simply because you paid more for it than it's worth now.  Give it up - you know who you are!