Madoff tipster Harry Markopolos assails SEC

[RightinNYC]

Madoff tipster Harry Markopolos assails SEC - Los Angeles Times

The man who waged a decade-long campaign to alert regulators to problems in the operations of fallen money manager Bernard Madoff told Congress today that he had feared for his physical safety.

Harry Markopolos also assailed the Securities and Exchange Commission in his first appearance before lawmakers. The SEC failed to act despite receiving credible allegations of fraud from Markopolos about Madoff's operations over a decade.

...

"The SEC is ... captive to the industry it regulates and is afraid" to bring big cases against prominent individuals, Markopolos asserted. The agency "roars like a lion and bites like a flea" and "is busy protecting the big financial predators from investors," he said.

Madoff, a prominent Wall Street figure, was arrested in December after allegedly confessing to bilking investors in what the authorities say was a giant Ponzi scheme, possibly the largest ever. His repeated warnings to SEC staff that Madoff was running a massive pyramid scheme have cast Markopolos as an unheeded prophet in the scandal.

"The SEC was never capable of catching Mr. Madoff. He could have gone to $100 billion" without being discovered, Markopolos testified. "It took me about five minutes to figure out he was a fraud."

Markopolos, a former securities industry executive and fraud investigator, brought his allegations to the SEC about improprieties in Madoff's business starting in 2000 after determining there was no way Madoff could have been making the consistent returns he claimed using the trading strategy he touted to prospective investors.

Sounds pretty bad, huh? Well, thank god that the incompetent people who let this happen have been gotten rid of.

While the SEC is incompetent, the securities industry's self-policing organization, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, is "very corrupt," Markopolos charged. That organization was headed until December by Mary Schapiro, President Barack Obama's new SEC chief.

.......oh.

 

[Thorgasm]

This is utterly pathetic. The whole SEC should be on a plane to Gitmo.

 

[American]

This is utterly pathetic. The whole SEC should be on a plane to Gitmo.

Uhh, they're closing that. No can do.

 

[bhkad]

BTW, in an instance of me too (sloppy) journalism there are any numbers of reports that the quote includes the word "lion" but Markopolos doesn't say "roars like a lion and bites like a flea".

Some reporter got it wrong and everyone else copied him/her.

The correct quote (I heard his statement Verbatim) included the word, "mouse."

In his testimony today before the House Financial Services subcommittee on capital markets, Markopolos said the relationship between the Boston and New York offices of the SEC was like that between Red Sox and Yankees fans, and that the SEC “roars like a mouse and bites like a flea.”

Harry Markopolos’ Fear and Loathing | Boston Daily

A small thing but details are telling things.

 

[Rodney]

BTW, in an instance of me too (sloppy) journalism there are any numbers of reports that the quote includes the word "lion" but Markopolos doesn't say "roars like a lion and bites like a flea".

Some reporter got it wrong and everyone else copied him/her.

The correct quote (I heard his statement Verbatim) included the word, "mouse."



Harry Markopolos’ Fear and Loathing | Boston Daily

A small thing but details are telling things.

I`m thinking that without details you get BS. The whole character of Harry`s statement was in that detail. Thanks for the important clarification.

 

[Rodney]

This is utterly pathetic. The whole SEC should be on a plane to Gitmo.

MONEY WHORES...one and all, they are, but thats not nearly all of them. DC is crawling with them.

 

[Thorgasm]

MONEY WHORES...one and all, they are, but thats not nearly all of them. DC is crawling with them.

What do you think capitalism promotes? We are all money whores.

 

[RightinNYC]

What do you think capitalism promotes? We are all money whores.

Excuse me, I'm a money companionship provider.

 

[Thorgasm]

Excuse me, I'm a money companionship provider.

I stand corrected. :mrgreen:

Money slut.

 

[winston53660]

Excuse me, I'm a money companionship provider.

Is that the PC way of saying you are a tyranical boos?

 

[jujuman13]

Whenever you get a Regulatory body, you have the situation where corruption can occur.
This is especially true of both Congress and the Senate.