Anybody have that New York Times article

[TNOE]

that I heard about all weekend?

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. Nope.

[librechik]

2. Ask Sarah, She reads everything!

[BrklynLiberal]

3. ROTFLMAO!!!

[lisa58]

4. I needed that - thanks

[lisa58]

5. regarding what?

[TNOE]

6. This crisis

the SEC turned a blind ear.

[TNOE]

7. Nobody knows?

I heard about it on quite a few shows this weekend. Figured it would be all over here.

[lisa58]

9. I checked the NYT website and don't see anything directly related to the sec

[frebrd]

8. You sure it wasn't a deaf eye?

:)

[TNOE]

10. From Bill Moyers Friday Night:

I did a NYT search & couldn't find it.

Front page of THE NEW YORK TIMES today has a bone-chilling story. And the bone-chilling story is about how, in a 55-minute meeting, one of the major rules that constrained Wall Street, and the requirement that Wall Street investment firms have capital adequate to protect against losses from bad loans or any other activity they were engaged in, how that rule was willy-nilly taken away and thrown aside, unanimous decision by the members of the SEC-

BILL MOYERS:Securities and Exchange Commission, right.

EMMA COLEMAN JORDAN:-permission.

BILL MOYERS:I read that story. It's-

EMMA COLEMAN JORDAN:It's bone chilling.

BILL MOYERS:I mean, it was part of the process of taking, you know, of putting the watchdog to sleep, right?

EMMA COLEMAN JORDAN:Well, there's two parts of the story. One part is they decided to take away the rule. And the rule was that they had to have a certain amount have capital. That rule was waived. The second part, which is even more important, frankly, was that in exchange for taking away this capital, the SEC was supposed to monitor these banks, investment banks, to see what their activities were. The statute was not clear about whether the SEC had that authority. And it turned out that what happened was, all of the monitoring was delegated to the industry itself. And so the computer programs of the securities firms themselves were used to monitor them. I mean, it was the most incredible case of foxes guarding-

BILL MOYERS:Starting of what?

EMMA COLEMAN JORDAN:-the chicken coop that I've ever seen.

BILL MOYERS:How do you explain it?

[Marie26]

12. I think this is it:

Agency’s ’04 Rule Let Banks Pile Up New Debt - http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/business/03sec.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&em

"But decisions made at a brief meeting on April 28, 2004, explain why the problems could spin out of control. The agency’s failure to follow through on those decisions also explains why Washington regulators did not see what was coming.

On that bright spring afternoon, the five members of the Securities and Exchange Commission met in a basement hearing room to consider an urgent plea by the big investment banks.

They wanted an exemption for their brokerage units from an old regulation that limited the amount of debt they could take on. The exemption would unshackle billions of dollars held in reserve as a cushion against losses on their investments. Those funds could then flow up to the parent company, enabling it to invest in the fast-growing but opaque world of mortgage-backed securities; credit derivatives, a form of insurance for bond holders; and other exotic instruments.

The five investment banks led the charge, including Goldman Sachs, which was headed by Henry M. Paulson Jr. Two years later, he left to become Treasury secretary."

[Infomaniac]

11. Is it this one?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/business/03sec.html?bl&ex=1223265600&en=80352c05b6d4b135&ei=5087

The Reckoning
Agency’s ’04 Rule Let Banks Pile Up New Debt

“We have a good deal of comfort about the capital cushions at these firms at the moment.” — Christopher Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, March 11, 2008.

[TNOE]

13. YES! I believe so

thanks to you and Marie~!!


Drive to Deregulate

The commission’s decision effectively to outsource its oversight to the firms themselves fit squarely in the broader Washington culture of the last eight years under President Bush.

A similar closeness to industry and laissez-faire philosophy has driven a push for deregulation throughout the government, from the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency to worker safety and transportation agencies.

“It’s a fair criticism of the Bush administration that regulators have relied on many voluntary regulatory programs,” said Roderick M. Hills, a Republican who was chairman of the S.E.C. under President Gerald R. Ford. “The problem with such voluntary programs is that, as we’ve seen throughout history, they often don’t work.”

As was the case with other agencies, the commission’s decision was motivated by industry complaints of excessive regulation at a time of growing competition from overseas. The 2004 decision was aimed at easing regulatory burdens that the European Union was about to impose on the foreign operations of United States investment banks.

The Europeans said they would agree not to regulate the foreign subsidiaries of the investment banks on one condition — that the commission regulate the parent companies, along with the brokerage units that the S.E.C. already oversaw.

A 1999 law, however, had left a gap that did not give the commission explicit oversight of the parent companies. To get around that problem, and in exchange for the relaxed capital rules, the banks volunteered to let the commission examine the books of their parent companies and subsidiaries.

[TNOE]

14. This is a very good & important article

I hope others will read.

[tigereye]

15. yes it was a good article- pretty scary

initially I thought you were talking about the Ayers article.