Michael Lewis has moved from Wall Street, to baseball, the left tackle, Iceland, the credit collapse and on to Greece. He takes a look at Greece’s financial crisis in the October issue of Vanity Fair: Beware of Greeks Bearing Bonds. One issue is the debt hangover. Greece has about $400 billion in outstanding government debt … Read more »
How About Working for SEC Enforcement?
The Dodd-Frank Act has created some new positions and some long occupied seats have opened up at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Maybe you have the skills to help the SEC? Yes, the SEC dropped in the rankings of best federal workplace, slipping from 3rd in 2007 to 24th in 2010. I suspect that reflects … Read more »
Compliance Bits and Pieces for September 10
It’s back-to-school week for me (well … my kids). That means summer is over and time to re-focus on good compliance and ethics. Here are some stories on those topics that popped up recently: Boards of directors: Clueless, but not criminal, mostly by Matt Kranz in USA Today Directors are rarely charged with fraud. The … Read more »
We Have Video of Barney Frank Arguing With a Dining Room Table
After pushing through the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, Barney Frank now needs to run for re-election. He is not running unopposed in the Democrat primary, but the opposition is … “interesting.” Barney is the congressman for my district, so I have voted for him in the past and plan to vote … Read more »
Ethics Upgrade at Oracle?
I’m not sure what to make of Mark Hurd, Hewlett-Packard, Larry Ellison, and Oracle. HP threw Hurd out on the street for some stupid behavior. By throwing out on the street, I mean let him keep most of his compensation package. Larry Ellison immediately came to his defense. He even went a step further and … Read more »
Credit Rating Agency Investigated for Fraud
The SEC brought an action against LACE Financial for issues with its independence. We also learned that the SEC had investigated whether rating agency Moody’s Investors Service, Inc. violated the registration provisions or the antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws. Moody’s was working on a rating for some new European securities. They ended up … Read more »
Credit Rating Agencies and Conflicts of Interest
Personally, I place a big chunk of blame on the Credit Rating Agencies for the Great Panic of 2008. They were throwing AAA ratings at piles of garbage. There is an inherent conflict in the rater being paid by the security issuer instead of the security purchaser. They are beholden to the customer and the … Read more »
Compliance Bits and Pieces for September 3
You are either getting your kids back to school, enjoying a vacation, or enjoying everyone else being out of the office on vacation. Me? I’m out of the office. There was still some interesting compliance news this past week: SEC employees win battle to dress casual By Zachary Goldfarb for Market Cop Some of the … Read more »
The Trouble with Anonymous Surveys
So how are your surveys working? Do you get meaningful results? Are the results skewed by those who responded (versus those who didn’t)? Read more »
FCPA Release 10-03: Foreign Agents as Foreign Officials
The Department of Justice released its latest FCPA Opinion Release. The requesting company for this opinion release is stepping into a situation full of FCPA red flags. In the end, the DOJ opined that it would not bring an enforcement action based on the safeguards put in place by the company. The company is involved … Read more »