When we heard SEC chairman Chris Cox was going to be holding a press conference with regard to the minor accounting issues at Madoff Investment Securities LLC, our first thought was: resignation. Not ’cause he hasn’t been doing a bang-up job at the joint, which he definitely has. Just for, you know the drama. His response to the following question changed our minds. We need the uber-phallically named Chris to stay for the entertainment value inherent in watching a man mix so many metaphors and still fail to come up with anything resembling something that makes sense.
Reporter: “Can investors be confident that there aren’t any other Madoff schemes out there in operation?”
Things that would’ve been preferable to the words that actually exited Cox’s mouth:
1. “Yes.”
2. “No.”
3. “Everyone should flee the market, do panic. Do not make an orderly line for the exits. Do trample over the old ladies in the back row on your way out. And when you leave, set fire to nearby buildings. It’s all over, bitches!”
What he actually said:
“We say that a rising tide lifts all boats. When the economic tide goes out, some of the skeletons that wash up on shore are Ponzi schemes such as this one. So one of the ways that these things are unhappily discovered is the roof falls in because of market conditions. ”
Also:
“The reason for this review is to make sure we’re upholding the traditionally very high standards of the SEC.”
Prior to posting your comments, I’d like everyone to keep in mind that he may very well have a learning disability of some sort.
A Classic!!! The SEC has been neutered by the Investment Banks and their Congressional Whores that they keep on tight leashes….Sad crap…
also loved the bit of how proud he was of all his “professionals” for doing such an “exceptional” job
L
I can’t wait for the SEC to increase their budget for “improvement.”
And what’s with the pirate/skeleton reference? Didn’t O^3 perfect this shit with some T&A?
no way! Well, I guess I shouldn’t be shocked.
Coxknocker should have saved the poetry about boats, tides, skeletons. Answer # 3 is the correct one.
SEC=
Sorry-assed
Economic
Commentators
I will hang up my keyboard and retire to the South of France immediately. No-one can compete with that silver-tongued devil.
TED
keep on knocking the SEC, the next time they visit your employer (if you have one) it will not be one of those no-deficiency letter audits. they will be coming in guns blazing with a mandate to find something. shit rolls downhill.
trammel != trample
So the SEC’s strategy for identifying such schemes is esentially to wait until they expose themselves by way of increased redemptions against a given fund’s bank accounts? Brilliant.
I feel much better knowing that CC is on the job…diligently waiting for the market to tank, thereby exposing unscrupulous firms that warrant prosecution.
9,
You mean they’ll finally be constructive?
@9 LOL, I never though I’d see the day Mark Cuban was commenting on Dealbreaker
@9
The SEC isn’t that proactive. They tend to favor the “wait and see” approach as implied Cox’s comment
Funny thing is he’s right. The whole market is a Ponzi scheme. Trying to get the Ponzi scheme out of the market, is like trying to get the guido out of Jersey. You could do it, but then there would be nothing left.
Vol Is King is absolutely correct.
@9 Not a chance! I gave the SEC major dirt on a major bank along with subpoena instructions and offered an affadavit. They haven’t done crap, and never will. Schumer will see to it that Cox and his “professionals” are put in a box to never see the light of day.
The person who needs to worry is some piddly ass broker who forgot to dot an “.” or cross a “t”. HE’LL got to prison, get fined up the Whazoo and Linda Thompsen will be trumpeting his travails to the world…..as a sign that the SEC is doing something…..
US House to investigate SEC over Madoff scandal.
Get out your popcorn: this is getting entertaining!
So I guess all Hedge funds are ponsi schemes according to the SEC, if they fail then there is some type of fraud going on?
Must be all the creative financing that is giving them trouble, so lets do the wait and see.
This is exactly what the Fed and Hoover did back in 1929.
Do nothing while evil men steal from rich old ladies on wall street.
Thats like saying if Wall Street collapses its a ponzi scheme. What a joke.
HA!!! Another funny post. Not as good as the drunk in the store (that will be hard to top) but this was funny.
What the fuck is up with these Harvard educated idiots!? Will someone please tell me why we keep putting them in charge of ANYTHING???
What.
The.
F@#k.
The alleged self-investigation will require many paper shredders. Can the FBI get involved and get a US court to issue an injunction to stop this show?
And Cox has just made an important contribution to the muddled metaphor index. So sad that the creator of the index is no longer with us to witness it.
@23 No sadly the FBI can’t do shit either. They answer to Schumer too!
Look, everyone who matters knows exactly where the corruption is and the associated evidence….plenty to convict. But this is 1920s Chicago and the investment banks are Capone. No one wants to go up against Capone and anyone who tries gets killed off….Ask Gary Aguirre to weigh in on my theory….
@23 No sadly the FBI can’t do shit either. They answer to Schumer too!
Look, everyone who matters knows exactly where the corruption is and the associated evidence….plenty to convict. But this is 1920s Chicago and the investment banks are Capone. No one wants to go up against Capone and anyone who tries gets killed off….Ask Gary Aguirre to weigh in on my theory….
The Roman legions marched on their stomach. Likewise, the Potomac crabs clearly crawl through beaches at low tide looking for buzzwords like shards of glass in the sand that has never passed through the hourglass of time.
@17 – you got that shit right. I started a hedge fund that never even raised any money – no complaints, no losses, nothing. Claimed that was only because they “caught me in time”. 2001 time frame. 15 yrs in the biz never a single customer complaint. SEC fined me and barred me for LIFE. WTF. They all BLOW. Complete and utter incompetence.
Nice dentures you dipshit
@24/25 – Thanks for the tip. That is scary to consider what that means. Damn.
I hope Hollywood catches on because there are some great movie plots. I mean, they’ll totally ruin them, but at least one or two good movies should come out of all of this. Especially the Aguirre situation, that one could be great. Maybe Kevin Spacey as Aguirre?
what a douchebag. He was good at catching sort of funny presumed spies when he was a congress man
with the Cox report and all.
Now he SHOULD be able to figure where Bernie is hiding the MONIES! really! A madeoff cox report. LOL
Legally, does Cox admitting the SEC missed the boat hurt or help the eventual court case against Madoff?
dat boy got him some teef!
@24/25:
Are you on crack or did I miss something about Capone shooting himself in the foot with his own home made gun?
The i-banks can’t help but accidentally put themselves out of business. Though I guess capone did become too “successful” for his own good as well. Anyway, now that the banks are infected with syphilis from whoring in the sub-prime market, they’ll be put out to pasture soon enough.
@31
Neither. It will be unrelated to the sucess (or lack thereof) of the persumed prosecution. Besides, Madoff has explicitly admitted that the whole thing was a Ponzi scheme if the news reports are to be believed.
The fun part will be figuring out where the money went (or still is as the case will more likely be). Michael Jackson, M.C. Hammer, Daryl Strawberry and Mike Tyson collectively couldn’t piss away anything close $50 billion over their cumulative “careers” and they were spending money on Amusement parks, plastic surgery, bribing kid’s parents for sleep over priveleges, numerous ridiculous houses and vehicles, pet tigers, air planes, whores, hard drugs, settling lawsuits and etcetera. Relative to their shining examples, Madoff kept a pretty low profile.
@34 – I think this has been stated elsewhere, but he didn’t actually lose $50 billion in cash. A great deal of that number was composed of false gains, unrealized “market” gains. If you are telling every investor that they gained 10-15% every year, that shit adds up quick. I believe someone speculated elsewhere that he only Madoff with like $8 billion in cash, which is still a shit load, but not $50 billion. And with Dow Jones down 40% in the last 12 months, it’s not a stretch to see that he made some bad trades.
Also, if this weren’t completely obvious (although lost on MSM none-the-less), more likely the $ was lost trading than blown on anything fun like the Tyson’s and Strawberrys of the world have done previously.
@ Analyst:
THERE IS NO $50bn! this is so stupid. Madoff never actually go his hands on $50bn, $50bn is just what he told people their accounts had grown too. He didn’t actually steal $50bn.
Honestly what he did is no different that what any of these funds marking to model are doing. Markup your assets 10% a year based on some theoretical model. Then when the market tanks lose everything at once. Bernie should have baked in a jump diffusion pricing model somewhere in his “model” then he could just claim the market was being irrational and his fundamentals were still sound like Citadel. He definitely wouldn’t be looking a jail time.
Hey if he’d made his equations dense enough he could have convinced himself it wasn’t a ponzi scheme, like Kenny G.
@35 & 36
I stand corrected. Not one of my finer posts.
HAHAHAHAHAHAH
So the actual losses really are what has been paid into the fund? Sounds like they would be in the same boat if they’d given the $$ to Citadel.
@26 HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Perhaps Mr. Cox ought to check out the other SEC’s Principles of Compliance and Enforcement:
The primary responsibility for rules compliance rests with the chief executive officer, athletics director, compliance coordinator and each sport’s head coach.
All individuals affiliated with the program, including faculty, staff, students, alumni and fans, share responsibility for compliance with SEC and NCAA rules.
Every institution in the SEC must have detailed written procedures in place to protect the integrity of its athletics program.
@38 – No problem, glad I could clear that up for you. Good to see at least one or two civil exchanges in here :)
SEC is dead, baby, SEC is dead… (from Pulp Fiction)
A career in journalism is out. Say, I like this .com! How much?
“In the past, when liberalism had resolved the crisis and restored tranquillity, conservatism has recovered power by the laws of political gravity; then it makes a new botch of things, and liberalism again must take over in the name of the nation.” — Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
English, motherf*cker! Do you speak it! (pulp fiction)
#46, Schlesinger was a doofus.
Liberalism and conservatism in the sense of each term he appears to have had in mind have had more in common than he (or they) generally understand and share responsibility for the periodic botches.
It is sort of like the “good cop” and the “bad cop.” It may feel nicer when the good cop is in the room with you, but you as a suspect in this scenario should NOT delude yourself into thinking that they are really at odds with one another.
They are both really at odds with your freedom. Remember that, now and always.
My fav part was when they asked him about his transition plan and he quickly pointed out how he announced his retirement a few back. Sees ya, hate to be ya.
@3
Kinda like Dubya telling Brownie great job during the Katrina fiasca! What’s changed during this administration?
In the past, I have commented extensively on how understaffed and ineffective the SEC is. It has something to do with Chris Cox and his boss’s belief that financial markets shouldn’t be regulated by laws that might send someone to jail.
Chris Cox showing up, wringing his hands, and ordering an investigation is like Claude Rains blowing a whistle and announcing that he was “shocked, shocked” that gambling was going on at Rick’s in Casablanca.
Let’s see someone ask him some really tough questoins… Mr. Cox, where did you get those teeth? Why do you look suspiciously like a Muppet?
Too Capped Teeth; Didn’t Read
Not that unreasonable really: When the tide goes out you can see who wasn’t wearing a bathing suit. Sometimes it takes a drought.
Not that unreasonable really: When the tide goes out you can see who wasn’t wearing a bathing suit. Sometimes it takes a drought.
cocksucker mixes metawhores