Sense on Cents

This morning the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission is questioning FDIC Head Sheila Bair, SEC Chair Mary Schapiro, Attorney General Eric Holder, and Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer.  We continue to hear from Bair, Schapiro, Holder, and Breuer about what changes are and will be occurring in the financial regulatory future more than we hear about what occurred in the past. A few questions about the regulatory past have not truly drilled down and they’ve been easily parried by Schapiro, primarily, but also by Bair and Holder.

The most egregious shortcoming in this morning’s questioning, though, is the fact that I have yet to hear anybody on the Commission question Ms. Schapiro about her role and responsibilities at FINRA, the Wall Street self-regulatory organization.

Schapiro continually references what is currently going on at the SEC. Current activities and future developments of the SEC are not the charge of this Commission.

America wants answers about what occurred in the past to bring our markets, our economy, and our country to its knees. The fact that the commissioners have not specifically raised the FINRA name begs the question as to whether they are even aware that Wall Street is a self-regulated industry.

Let’s introduce the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission to the institution that is charged to protect investors and regulate Wall Street. Here’s a link to my total Sense on Cents body of work on FINRA. I just submitted this link, encompassing 131 commentaries, to the Commission. Plenty of the material is repetitive, so with a few staff people working on it they should be able to make real headway within a day or two.

Regular readers of Sense on Cents are aware that my writing is no mere internet hyperbole. Newer readers may be interested to learn more about the credible allegations of a FINRA investment in Bernie Madoff. How about the fact that FINRA liquidated $647 million in auction-rate securities while possessing material non-public information about the market’s failure. There is so much more.

America demands and deserves answers.

LD

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 14th, 2010 at 11:10 AM and is filed under FINRA, General, Mary Schapiro. 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.