Courtesy of Pam Martens
SEC Chair Jay Clayton
It’s becoming clear that the reason so many Americans have their pockets picked by Wall Street scam artists year after year is that mainstream media simply won’t put the dangers of dealing with the mega Wall Street banks on their front pages. Yesterday’s Senate Banking hearing is yet one more example of mainstream media failing the interests of the American people.
At yesterday’s hearing, Senator after Senator probed the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Jay Clayton, on what were clearly intentional failings to hold Wall Street accountable. The scathing rebukes of the SEC came from both Republican and Democrats on the Senate panel. But you will find no reports about that hearing on the front pages of newspapers today — or in any section of leading newspapers.
Particularly harsh in their appraisal of Clayton’s rein at the SEC were Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Democratic Senators Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland.
Brown is the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee and spoke at length at the opening of the session, right after the Republican Chair of the Committee, Mike Crapo, gave a far more charitable assessment of the SEC under Clayton. Brown listed example after example of how Clayton’s SEC has worked for the interests of “serial law breakers” on Wall Street over the interests of “hardworking families.” Brown’s statement appears in its entirety below.
Senator Tom Cotton provided a scathing rebuke of the SEC’s failure to stop the grossly conflicted and grossly overvalued company, WeWork, from getting its prospectus to become a publicly-traded company through the SEC’s fogged lenses. The initial public offering (IPO) of WeWork didn’t get pulled this year because the SEC refused to greenlight its offering statement to the public investor. It got pulled because its obscene conflicts with its founder and CEO, Adam Neumann, went viral on social media platforms and in the business press. Those conflicts included Neumann buying up real estate and then leasing it back to his own company; trademarking the words “We Company” and then selling it to his company for $5.9 million; and attempting to list his company with a valuation of $47 billion when it was just weeks away from running out of money.
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