Sense on Cents

How do people feel about the performance of the SEC over the last number of years?

Seriously. On a scale of 1-10 (1 being horrendous and 10 being superb), please share your opinion as to how the SEC has gone about pursuing its mission of protecting investors and our markets while overseeing the manner in which Wall Street’s banks and money managers run their operations.

I ask this very basic question as a means of also grading the performance of the SEC’s Director of Enforcement, Robert Khuzami, during this period.

As a reminder, Khuzami and his boss Mary Schapiro were tasked with cleaning up the colossal mess left by the prior SEC regime under Chris Cox. Not an easy job, mind you. In my opinion, however, they failed miserably. As such, I think Khuzami and Schapiro are both deserving of a grade 1. I think they were horrendous.

When our nation needed real character and courage, Schapiro and Khuzami provided complicity and cover.

I am not saying that Khuzami’s job was easy, but better that he not take the position than provide mere shadow boxing in terms of performance.

I am not alone in my assessment.

None other than the folks within the General Accounting Office also recently graded the SEC harshly with a piss-poor rating of 19th out of 22 government agencies as best agencies to work at in terms of employee satisfaction. Reuters recently highlighted this horrendous performance.

Yet we awake today to see that all is working out just fine for Mr. Khuzami as he takes a stroll through the Washington-Wall Street revolving door and accepts a position at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis at the rate of $5 million per year for the next 2 years. Bully for him.

In his wake, though, he leaves a culture of distrust within the commission and a sense of very real betrayal from investors across the nation.

That is not mere opinion. Those are facts.

And so it goes as Washington remains in bed with Wall Street.

Please do let me and others know what grade you would assign to Mr. Khuzami’s performance . . . and then, navigate accordingly.

I thank the reader who brought this recent development to my attention.

Larry Doyle

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I have no business interest with any entity referenced in this commentary. The opinions expressed are my own. I am a proponent of real transparency within our markets so that investor confidence and investor protection can be achieved.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 23rd, 2013 at 9:54 AM and is filed under General, regulation, revolving door, SEC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.