Courtesy of Pam Martens.
Elizabeth Warren Speaking on Restoring the Glass-Steagall Act, November 12, 2013
Earlier this month, Senator Elizabeth Warren was so exasperated with the obstructionist role that Mary Jo White has played at the SEC that she sent her a sternly worded, 13-page letter calling her out on her serial broken promises.
Senator Warren highlighted White’s failure to finalize rules requiring disclosure of the ratio of CEO pay to the median worker; her failure to curb the use of waivers for companies that violate securities law; the SEC’s continued practice of settling the vast majority of cases without requiring meaningful admissions of guilt; and White’s repeated recusals related to her prior employment and her husband’s current employment at law firms representing Wall Street.
Now, Wall Street On Parade has uncovered a major new area of concern. For more than two years now, SEC Chair Mary Jo White has been aware that the most dangerous banks on Wall Street, which are publicly traded securities, have been engaging in “capital relief trades” with hedge funds and private equity firms to dress up the appearance of stronger capital while keeping the deteriorating assets on their books. But neither White nor her Director of Enforcement, Andrew Ceresney, have put a halt to the practice.
Both White and Ceresney hail from the corporate law firm, Debevoise & Plimpton, whose clients include the biggest banks on Wall Street. White spent the bulk of the last 40 years at Debevoise and brought along Ceresney to head up enforcement when she joined the SEC. Ceresney had been with Debevoise since 2005, representing people charged with corporate crimes and securities fraud.
While White and Ceresney have allowed these risky capital relief trades to proliferate in the dark, their former law firm has been gushing over the trades and drumming up business for the murky area. In a Debevoise publication sent to clients in 2013, the law firm indicated it had experience in these deals and said they “appear to be particularly good opportunities for funds to generate revenue by providing targeted credit support, while retaining the ability to actively deploy capital as needed.”
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