SEC staff watched porn as economy crashed
by ilene - April 23rd, 2010 6:06 pm
SEC staff watched porn as economy crashed; Senate panel: Ratings agencies rolled over for Wall Street; SEC Ignored Stanford Ponzi Scheme For 12 Years
Courtesy of Mish
What was the SEC doing when Bernie Madoff was stealing billions and the economy crashed? Here are a few reports.
SEC staffers watched porn as economy crashed
CNN is reporting SEC staffers watched porn as economy crashed
"During the past five years, the SEC OIG (Office of Inspector General) substantiated that 33 SEC employees and or contractors violated Commission rules and policies, as well as the government-wide Standards of Ethical Conduct, by viewing pornographic, sexually explicit or sexually suggestive images using government computer resources and official time," said a summary of the investigation by the inspector general’s office.
More than half of the workers made between $99,000 and $223,000. All the cases took place over the past five years.
A regional office staff accountant tried to access pornographic websites nearly 1,800 times, using her SEC laptop during a two-week period. She also had about 600 pornographic images saved on her laptop hard drive.
Separately, a senior attorney at SEC headquarters admitted to downloading pornography up to eight hours a day, according to the investigation.
"In fact, this attorney downloaded so much pornography to his government computer that he exhausted the available space on the computer hard drive and downloaded pornography to CDs or DVDs that he accumulated in boxes in his office," the inspector general’s report said.
SEC Knew About and Ignored Stanford Ponzi Scheme
Please consider IG report: SEC knew of Stanford scheme since 1997.
The Securities and Exchange Commission knew since 1997 that R. Allen Stanford likely was operating a Ponzi scheme but waited 12 years to bring fraud charges against the billionaire, the agency inspector general said Friday.
An SEC enforcement official who helped quash investigations of Stanford’s business later legally represented him, according to a new report by the agency watchdog.
The SEC didn’t bring charges against Stanford until February 2009, when it alleged a $7 billion fraud. SEC Inspector General David Kotz said in the report that "institutional influence" in the enforcement division was a factor in the agency’s repeated decisions not to conduct a full investigation.
The IG’s office did find evidence, however, that "institutional influence" within the enforcement division contributed to the repeated decisions not to conduct a thorough investigation of
Congress in action (humor)
by ilene - April 14th, 2010 12:15 pm
Example of Congressional oversight and idiotic solutions, by The Onion.
Congress Announces Plan To Hide Nation’s Porn From Future Generations
Congress Announces Plan To Hide Nation’s Porn From Future Generations
See Also: U.S. Flag Recalled After Causing 143 Million Deaths, The Onion