Ackerman Emasculates SEC..............

The vid with Ackerman looks like Ackerman is trying to get the SEC counsel to plead the 5th amendement for the SEC. That would be a hoot, of course he didn't but said so "in part" (executive priveldge or some bs) . lmao.

The SEC is trying to lay it all off on Congress for following the laws Congress enacted by not disclosing anything. It is a circle jerk.

This I'm sure was forseeable by reasonable men but collectivly it is insanity.

I'm sure many of us are aware of situations in daily life where one event is going to happen and when everyone follows the rules it doesn't work.

 

I put this in its own thread, but this it the complete sodomizing of the SEC

http://www.c-span.org/Watch/watch.aspx?MediaId=HP-R-15082

 

13.4 million????!!!!?????

Wire: BLOOMBERG News (BN) Date: 2009-02-04 05:01:00
SEC’s Madoff Miss Fits Pattern Set With Pequot: Gary J. Aguirre

Commentary by Gary J. Aguirre
Feb. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Shakespeare tells us to “give the

devil his due.” So forget for a moment the harm Bernard Madoff

caused his victims, and focus on his singular achievement.

Measured by the sheer amount of his alleged theft, he could go

down, if convicted, as the greatest thief of all time.

In fairness to his competition, one question begs an answer:

how skilled and dedicated was Madoff’s adversary? Arthur Conan

Doyle pitted Professor Moriarty, the diabolical genius, against

Sherlock Holmes, who showed his brilliance by spotting and

connecting the subtlest clues.

Errant Wall Street elite, such as Madoff, go up against the

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Congress created the SEC

in 1934 after Wall Street titans -- the Madoffs of 1929 --took

the capital markets over a cliff with the economy in tow. The SEC

was supposed to keep a watchful eye on Wall Street, especially

its elite.

So far, the SEC’s six investigations of Madoff read more

like Keystone Cops than Sherlock Holmes. The SEC didn’t merely

fail to spot and connect the clues. Someone else -- Harry

Markopolos, a former money manager -- did that work for it. His

November 2005 letter to the SEC made a compelling case that

Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme. Somehow, the SEC managed to

bungle the Madoff investigation while holding Markopolos’s

blueprint.

So the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time morphs seamlessly

into a gripping mystery: What went wrong inside the SEC?

A 2007 report by two Senate committees provides a window

into the SEC’s inner workings when Wall Street elite are under

scrutiny.
Pequot Investigation

The Senate Judiciary and Finance committees conducted an

exhaustive review of my allegations that the SEC mishandled its

insider-trading investigation of Pequot Capital Management Inc.,

a hedge fund. I led that SEC investigation until September 2005,

when I was fired, as the Senate report concluded, for questioning

my supervisors’ preferential treatment of John Mack. Mack was

chairman of Pequot before taking his current job as chief

executive officer of Morgan Stanley.

The SEC closed its Pequot investigation in November 2006

without filing a case against anyone. The SEC ignored the call in

February 2007 by Senators Charles Grassley and Arlen Specter to

reopen it. The agency reopened the case last month only after

receiving compelling new evidence that left it with no choice.

This new evidence suggests the SEC ignored a road map of

possible insider trading by Pequot in Microsoft Corp. options.

In 2005, I uncovered e-mails between Arthur Samberg,

Pequot’s chief executive officer, and David Zilkha, a Microsoft

employee, shortly before Microsoft announced its third quarter

2001 results. (Zilkha had recently accepted a job offer from

Samberg.) Samberg asked Zilkha for “tidbits” on those results.
Possible Tip

I left my supervisors a single-page timeline, in effect a

blueprint where to focus the investigation, along with a notebook

of backup. It pinpointed April 9, 2001, as the date of a possible

tip from Zilkha to Samberg.

The 2007 Senate report suggests the SEC bungled the

Microsoft piece of the Pequot investigation, just as it did the

Mack piece. It never examined Zilkha or any other Microsoft

employee under oath. By all signs, the SEC ignored my blueprint

on Pequot’s Microsoft trading, just as it would later ignore the

Markopolos blueprint of Madoff’s theft.

Last November, I received new information on the Microsoft

piece, including court records suggesting that Samberg or Pequot

had begun paying Zilkha $2.1 million a few months after the SEC

closed its investigation.

E-Mail Exchange

I also obtained a copy of a purported e-mail exchange

between Zilkha and another Microsoft employee, Mark Spain,

relating to Microsoft’s third quarter. Zilkha’s April 7, 2001, e-

mail asked in the subject block, “Any visibility on the recent

quarter?” and in the body asked, “Hey there. Have you heard

whether we will miss estimates? Any other info?”

The next day, Spain’s e-mail replied in part, “march was

the best march of record,” and, “on track for revised

forecast.” In May 2007, the Senate released the timeline that I

had left with my SEC supervisors in 2005. For April 9, 2005, the

timeline reads: “Presumed MNI (material nonpublic information)

Communication.”

I provided this new information to Senate investigators as

it became available, then to the Federal Bureau of Investigation,

and only then to the SEC, which had shown so little interest or

initiative in the case.

In December, Specter wrote then-SEC Chairman Christopher

Cox: “(R)ecent events provide the SEC with an opportunity to

make good its Pequot investigation, despite having precipitously

and unjustifiably closed the case in November 2006.”

The SEC has now reopened its Pequot investigation. Like

Specter, I hope the SEC will “make good its Pequot

investigation,” but I have my doubts.

Traveling Rolodexes

The SEC’s vigilant eye on Wall Street has gotten clouded

with dollar signs. For many SEC attorneys, especially those atop

the enforcement division, their time at the agency is a stop on

their way to seven-figure jobs representing Wall Street elite.

And they take their Rolodexes with them.

I dealt with three ex-SEC enforcement directors and other

well-connected attorneys, including a former White House counsel,

on the other side of the Pequot case. They had “juice” with the

SEC’s hierarchy, according to my supervisor, and they knew how to

use it. One of them, Gary Lynch, at Credit Suisse First Boston,

would follow Mack to Morgan Stanley in the fall of 2005, where he

would start at $13.2 million as its top lawyer, according to SEC

filings.

For Congress and the new SEC chairwoman, Mary Schapiro,

solving the Madoff mystery may not be such a challenge. It may

ultimately boil down to this: Did Madoff and his attorney -- a

former head of the SEC’s New York office -- also use their juice?

(Gary J. Aguirre, a lawyer in San Diego, was a s