Perhaps we should thank Dodd-Frank for one thing – its contribution to the sticky unemployment problem. Mary Schapiro says the SEC will need to add 800 people to implement financial reform, which she says promises to be “logistically challenging and extremely labor intensive.”
And the SEC did find some money to fund these positions. The NYT notes that “[t]he $550 million Goldman is paying also represents nearly half the White House’s budget request of $1.2 billion for the S.E.C. for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1.”
Maybe Goldman was a strike suit in a more literal sense than I’ve suggested.
Like rotten mackerel by moonlight, it shines and stinks:
The SEC’s fishy deal with Goldman
Examiner Editorial
July 20, 2010
It seemed a little odd last week when the Securities and Exchange Commission settled its lawsuit against Goldman Sachs within two hours of Senate passage of the Democrats’ Dodd-Frank financial reform bill. After all, who could ask for a more perfect backdrop than a successful prosecution of the investment colossus of Wall Street and a prime mover in the economic crisis of 2008? But this one looks stranger still considering that the SEC action was announced on April 15 of this year, only a week before the legislation was brought before the Senate, thus neatly bookending debate on the proposal. And it gets even stranger. On the same April 15, President Obama’s campaign organization, Organizing for America, purchased a Google ad directing people who Googled “Goldman Sachs SEC” to donate money at my.barackobama.com.
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Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/Answers-needed-on-SEC_s-Goldman-deal-1001783-98789954.html#ixzz0uGLID0Ru