Sense on Cents

Helen Davis Chaitman, esteemed and distinguished attorney with Phillips Nizer in New York City, was my guest on No Quarter Radio’s Sense on Cents with Larry Doyle on November 5th. We addressed the gross inequity embedded in the business practices of SIPC (Securities Investor Protection Corporation). How gross? What inequity? The fact that SIPC member firms (i.e. every broker dealer and bank on Wall Street) paid a “whopping” $150 annual assessment from 1996-2009 in order to promote and accord protection for their investors.

$150 per year for Goldman Sachs? JP Morgan? Bank of America? Yes, for 13 years SIPC member firms paid annual assessments of only $150. Of all the travesties on Wall Street, this SIPC joke may be the biggest of them all.

Ms. Chaitman, who has worked diligently on behalf of the Madoff Coalition for Investor Protection on a pro bono basis, provided riveting details and dialogue during my interview. This past Wednesday, Ms. Chaitman did the same for the House Finance Sub-Committee on Capital markets chaired by Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-PA).

I strongly exhort people to realize that the Madoff scam is not merely a fraud strictly impacting Madoff investors. The failure of our financial regulators, the financial regulatory system, and SIPC impacts us all. The regulators, the regulatory system, and SIPC have failed all investors. Why? How?

The lack of confidence in our markets on behalf of investors remains pervasive. Helen Davis Chaitman provides a tremendous public service in highlighting the aformentioned failures. I encourage readers here at Sense on Cents to watch this 9-minute video clip of Ms. Chaitman’s testimony. She speaks for all of us.

LD

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 at 6:53 AM and is filed under Bernie Madoff, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.