Courtesy of Pam Martens
Maxine Waters, the Chair of the House Financial Services Committee, has announced a roster of hearings coming this September. Two of the hearing topics particularly caught our eye as both timely and critical.
On Tuesday, September 24, the Committee will hold a hearing titled: “Oversight of the Securities and Exchange Commission: Wall Street’s Cop on the Beat.” If Chair Waters wants to really open eyes as to what the SEC has become – Wall Street’s bad cop on the beat – she will invite the following individuals to give testimony that day: James Kidney, Darcy Flynn, Gary Aguirre, and Harry Markopolos.
Testimony from these individuals will show that while the SEC has, throughout its history, had dedicated and honest career attorneys who want to stop the crimes and corruption on Wall Street, there always seems to be a roadblock thrown in their way by the top management at the SEC – which has a habit of being plucked from Wall Street’s own go-to lawyers. (See SEC Nominee Has Represented 8 of the 10 Largest Wall Street Banks in Past Three Years and The Whites Go to the SEC: Why Wall Street Still Owns Washington.)
James Kidney, Former SEC Attorney
James Kidney was a 25-year career attorney at the SEC who retired in 2014. At his retirement party, Kidney delivered a deeply critical speech on upper management of the SEC. The speech went viral. Last October 12, Kidney delivered another blistering assessment of upper management at the SEC in a lecture at Lake Forest College outside of Chicago. He called the leadership of the SEC “self-serving cowards” who ignored big crimes on Wall Street because they were “looking to move on, to return to their Wall Street job.”
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