Dealbook reports that Mary Schapiro has given official notice and come December 14th, she’s out of there. Names being floated as possible successors are said to include Sallie Krawcheck and the SEC’s director of enforcement, Robert Khuzami, but on the off-chance they’re not interested, want to throw yours or a loved one’s C.V. in the mix? Update: Apparently Obama plans to nominate Elisse Walter, an SEC commissioner and former FINRA VP, to take over. So you’ve probably got less of a shot at this point but anything can happen!
Mary Schaprio
A whistleblower who helped the Securities and Exchange Commission stop a multi-million dollar fraud will receive nearly $50,000 — the first payout from a new SEC program to reward people who provide evidence of securities fraud. The award represents 30 percent of the amount collected in an SEC enforcement action against the perpetrators of the scheme, the maximum percentage payout allowed by the whistleblower law. “The whistleblower program is already becoming a success,” said SEC Chairman Mary L. Schapiro, who advocated for the program. “We’re seeing high-quality tips that are saving our investigators substantial time and resources.” [SEC]
“I had no intent to injury or bodily harm anybody,” Vincent McCrudden told a judge today after pleading guilty to emailing a bunch of regulators describing them as “fucking corrupt piece[s] of shit!” letting them know that they were “not getting away with this,” encouraging them to “laugh mother fucker laugh,” and making it clear that “it wasn’t ever a question of ‘if’ I was going to kill you, it was just of when.” McCrudden, who also had an “execution” list on his website and encouraged people to help him cross the 47 names off the list, added that he “apologized” and was sorry for “any apprehension [the threats] may have caused” his targets and their families. Having said that, McC noted that he’d been “upset” about a suit against him by the CFTC and never actually “intended to injury or bodily harm anybody. [BW, earlier]
And they said it couldn’t be done! Read more »
The following post is by Dealbreaker reader and commenter Infinite Guest.
Whether they could have avoided it, I don’t know–today’s Securities and Exchange Commission acts like a wounded animal–the management of Goldman, Sachs & Co. made a strategic error by failing to cultivate a closer relationship with the new regime. That much is evident from the fact that the suit came as a surprise. Chairman Schapiro is quite capable of partnering with industry: Had Goldman done better, earlier, there might never have been a lawsuit. Popular wisdom says that Goldman should settle. I disagree. Although both parties understand that cooperation beats enmity, the SEC chose not to cooperate; and now, Goldman’s best strategy is to respond in kind. Read more »
So the SEC voted 3-2 in favor of restricting short-selling today, at the risk of pissing off Goldman Sachs, whose head of US equity trading Paul Russo had been lobbying against the proposal for some time. However, even Mary Schapiro knows that no one can truly make a full frontal attack on GS, and mitigated the rule to take into consideration Russo’s advice, deemed to be the “least harmful”: trigger a circuit breaker any time a stock has dropped 10% in one day.
Our fave porn-loving regulators are taking a stab, yet again, at short selling, considering measures to curb it “soon.” But while one can only laud Mary Schapiro’s effort to sugar coat the proposal, she’s not helping the SEC regain any kind of respectability and seriousness, and at this point, Mary might want to consider a lesson or two from Lucas van P.
This is what she had to say, and if someone can translate, please stand up: “It is difficult to connect the dots and ferret out wrongdoing as trading activity frequently occurs across various markets and each market is only able to readily see trading activity conducted in their own market.”
CNBC reports the first bits of news from Bernie Madoff’s latest prison interview. First off, he cannot express how crazy it is that he got away with all this but if he had to identify one reason it was probably so easy was the fact that “everything the SEC did before 2006″ was a “waste of time.” Also? That broad running the new and improved Securities and Exchange Commission? Mary Schapiro? She’s “a dear friend” of the Master o’ Ponz. So basically this is how it’s going to work. Every few months, for remainder of his sentence, Bernie’s going ruin someone’s reputation by claiming they are one of his close personal friends, trusted advisor or fuck buddy. Who’s next? You tell us.
Update: Oh god it keeps getting better. Whistleblower “Harry Markopolos” was “a joke inside the industry” and “jealous” of Madoff’s returns.
- Use the Bloomberg command
NH BLG_DEALBREAKER <GO>
to access Dealbreaker
