Former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt spoke with FOX Business Network’s Alexis Glick and said that “we won’t prevent the next Bernie Madoff” and that “training has not been a high priority at the SEC.”
Here are some excerpts from the interview:
Courtesy of Fox Business News
On preventing future ponzi schemes:
“If you regard a World Com, and Enron, a Madoff, a Tino De Angelis, a Salad Oil scandal as a failure, then I don’t agree with you, because there isn’t a regulatory agency or a U.S. Attorney’s office that finds these scams before they happen. They never find them before they happen or we wouldn’t have them.”
“We won’t prevent the next Bernie Madoff. What we can do is learn from Bernie Madoff and take steps to see to it that that kind of scandal doesn’t occur again, but there’ll be a new scandal and a new development.”
On why the SEC failed to protect investors from Madoff:
“They like the kind of experienced people who are interfacing with the firms and going out and looking at what they’re doing. They simply aren’t up to the job. Training has not been a high priority at the SEC—it should be now—training specifically on trading techniques.”
On if he feels he bears some responsibility for Bernie Madoff:
“Sure. I think anybody working in a managerial position at the SEC going back to the late 1980s has some portion of responsibility.”
Ex. SEC Chief on Madoff…
Levitt on Markets…
So training isn’t a priority? Neither is ethics. The SEC hasn’t done its job for a long time because they are all part of the good-old-boy scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours nasty network that controls and manipulates the markets. They are too busy stuffing their pockets to give a damn about anyone. It isn’t just the Madoff affair. So they uncovered lies and inconsistencies and never followed up. So they refused offers of further proof from whistleblowers. So they allowed investment banks to leverage themselves nearly 40 to 1. So what?
As long as this is the attitude, the banksters will continue to screw America.