What is the SEC supposed to be doing while all of this is going on?
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What the Report does not tell us, except in the most general terms, is what the SEC is doing with the tips.
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But we also need to take a look at the degree to which disclosure, which is what the SEC is supposed to be all about, by foreign borrowers and foreign users of our capital markets does not measure up to disclosure by our own domestic companies.
In fact, what is clear is that the SEC knew about this information prior to its lawsuit, considered what Goldman could do with it, and decided to file the lawsuit anyway.
The options market has said narrowing the exemption--which is what the SEC has proposed--will be costly and have a chilling effect on market-maker activities.
The key question then is what type of rules should the SEC be crafting?
What else is wrong in the SEC report?
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What the SEC action is telling us is that the agency has serious concerns about consultant conflicts of interest and the resulting harm to pensions.
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The data on downsizings I did find at the ex-employee site, so I credit him with drawing my attention to what is publicly available data in the SEC filings.
What is surprising is that this data has been sitting on the SEC and FINRA websites for years and only now are there calls from financial advisors about inaccurate information and fears that investors will misinterpret what the information means.
The annuity is equal to the value of what's been contributed plus the Sec. 7520 rate.
"At a minimum, it is very, very troubling what the SEC has done here, " Specter said.
What remains unclear, however, is how the SEC will fulfill its equally important role as a rule-maker in the coming years.
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What the SEC does not have is the dominant television network.
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Failing to get what they ultimately want (which is for the SEC to just drop the whole issue), options industry veterans say they are at least pleased that their comments on the issue have been heard.
But if one takes time to look behind the SEC filings, what emerges is much more supportive of Romney's statements.
Unfortunately, the SEC has not disclosed much in the way of personal information about the whistleblower, so it is difficult to take a full measure of what the individual may have contributed to any SEC investigations.
What exists today between the SEC and the regulated is selective or limited cooperation.
What the SEC and DOL did not say is whether the pervasive conflicts and non-disclosure they discovered have resulted in any harm to pensions.
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This, as Aguilar pointed out Wednesday, is exactly the opposite of what most people assume the SEC has at its disposal to watch the markets.
What particularly disturbs me here is not the fact that the SEC, which has all sorts of problems with its main mission of uncovering fraud, has unleashed another useless and costly disclosure rule on firms at a time when they struggling to make money and provide jobs.
What is important is the quality of the cases and whether there are enough quality cases to create the deterrent effect that the SEC needs to create.
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Thanks to Dodd-Frank, banks are passing regulatory fees along to corporate borrowers, and the SEC is going to "define" what "venture capital" is.
What an activist-minded Treasury chief and the SEC should do is make sure that bank regulators and the accounting profession don't overreact.
What the SEC and DOL have now said in no uncertain terms is that investment consultants are fiduciaries to their pension clients under the federal securities laws.
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The SEC is, in effect, asking board directors not just what they can do for their company, but what they can do for their country.
The SEC is still investigating the events of the day and has yet to determine what the actual cause was.
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The SEC, it seems, is taking its accounting-related enforcement cue from what companies and their auditors decide is a problem.
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