Insider Trading at the SEC

Honestly, why would anyone be surprised by this "revelation"? These are the same clowns (SEC) who abjectly failed to detect Bernard L. Madoff's $60 billion Ponzi scheme and turned a blind eye to the Wall Street financial crisis.

The man who blew the whistle on Madoff, Harry Markopolos, told the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance and Government Sponsored Enterprises."I gift wrapped and delivered the largest Ponzi scheme in history to them and some how they couldn't be bothered to conduct a thorough and proper investigation because they were too busy on matters of higher priority,"

The SEC couldn’t be bothered because they were instructed to look the other way.

It doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to conclude that there was dirty dealing going on at the SEC as well as implicit collusion between corporate America and our government. How many of our elected officials were in on the gambit?

"We ought to be outraged if there is one insider trading information that’s leading to personal profit," Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee.

Perhaps senator, and while we appreciate your own efforts to root out corruption and government waste, it was the policies of the Party of Reagan that created the economic environment that allowed this festering open wound to become gangrenous.

He continued, "Isn’t it odd that you’ve got people in the prosecuting department that are trying to profit from information that they get from it. Their job is to be prosecuting and not profiteering."

Let’s take a moment to look at the allegations. The male attorney, who works in the Office of the SEC's Chief Counsel, is accused of using highly confidential nonpublic information as research material to inform his own stock trading and “recommend particular stocks” to members of his family.  The female attorney made a high volume of trades between 2006 and 2008 and sold all of the shares of her stock in a large health care company two months before an investigation of the same health care company was opened.

What kind of money are we talking about here? The male attorney’s stock portfolio was estimated at one point to be valued at $200,000. And, the female attorney’s stock portfolio was valued as high as $170,000.

At best, these two attorney’s engaged in improper conduct by using their positions within the SEC for personal profit.  Fire them. End of story.

Grassly sputtered, “It’s hard to imagine a more serious violation of the public trust than for the agency responsible for protecting investors to allow its employees to profit from non-public information about its enforcement activities.”

Actually, thanks to a never-ending litany of graft and corruption at every level of corporate America and goverment, it’s pretty damned easy to imagine more serious violations of the public trust. We honestly beleive that most (thinking) Americans are waiting on pins and needles for the "real" bomb to drop.

Compared to the ludicrous wealth amassed by our CEO’s, bankers and elected officials, $370,000 is chicken feed.

Back in 1919 and 1920, the acronym for Charles Ponzi’s company was SEC. His firm was the Securities Exchange Company. One can't help but note the irony that our regulatory watchdogs call themselves the Securities and Exchange Commission.