That said, I am NEVER surprised by the level of ignorance of many within the American public. To wit, I am not going to bother to further simplify it for you.

Government agency incompetent:
I’m shocked….. shocked
“Competent government agency” could be the BIGGEST oxymoron.

http://campaignforliberty.com/campaigns/auditthefed1.php?projid=134

I have the awful feeling, Larry, that the corruption and fraud has seeped through a wide swath of our financial markets and government regulators. Can we depend on legal investigation and judicial branch?

I hope so. Because it appears that that is the last line of defense.

As for the fourth estate to cover this? I do not trust the media any farther than I could throw them. And I’m 5’3 and weigh about 120 pounds.

Not alot of confidence!

My experiences working with the SEC did not impress me. The first visit was called a “routine visit.” They couldn’t find anything wrong, but they went after all kinds of small stuff. They stayed for two weeks, and accomplished nothing beyond using up a lot of toner in the copy machine.

The second visit took place when our part of Connecticut was reassigned from the Boston regional office to the New York regional office. The New York crew spent some time in our lovely new office building overlooking Long Island Sound. It was an easy gig for them, because all our stuff was 100% in order, we had relatively low AUM and one simple product. But it was summer, and the streets of Greenwich Ct offered lots of recreational opportunities. Three weeks of investigation – nothing found out of the ordinary.

The SEC is a beaurocratic nightmare that reaches for low hanging fruit, and stays away from controversy and complications. They were more concerned with internal politics at their agency than anything else. I trust them with nothing.

I lost my job last year after the events of September. Now I’m taking prereq’s to go to nursing school.

Somebody needs to shake the SEC up. They don’t want to do the hard stuff, only the safe stuff.

Sometimes I feel like I live in a zoo country of incompetent wild animals.

The SEC of course should have been doing its job, but how many companies/funds are out there where people lost truckloads of their investments because the SEC was not doing its job? In the end it is always buyer beware.

And these Madoff customers were not suspicious with those unreal returns all those years? There are many more swindles that happen in this industry that started out much less suspiciously and were not adjudicated to the satisfaction of investors.

Is this group trying to get some remittance for damages or are they just trying to improve the system? I hope it’s not the former. The Madoff investors were NOT going to share their gains, so I hope they don’t ask anyone not involved to share their losses. Otherwise investors in similar situations should be treated the same regardless of size or publicity of the cases, and this would be impossible.

If an agency does not function examine why and if it performed in the past. Usually purposely underfunding and leadership by political appointee hacks will stop any kind of adequate performance. Blame those who underfund and appoint the mis-managers who are frequently cronies who are looking for a political payoff. The Bush and Clinton WH’s and a lazy Congress are responsible for the incompetence of the carefully assembled non-performers who sat around and looked the other way. Cox is a liar.