Mary Schapiro Quotes
When the SEC needs to be deterring corporate wrongdoing, the 'penalty pilot' program sends the wrong message.
Schapiro, Mary L. "Remarks at the 'SEC Speaks in 2009'." U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 6 Feb. 2009.
The then attorney general had begun a series of investigation which discovered that most of the major Wall Street brokerage houses were engaged in systematic frauds to cheat small investors. One dramatic fraud he uncovered was that the research expert analysts of major firms would recommend the stock of businesses that their firm was doing investment banking for even when they knew that the companies were not doing well or were even in deep financial trouble. See {627544}.
Marcopolos had discovered the Bernie Madoff Ponzi Scheme Fraud 9 years before the government discovered the largest consumer fraud ($68 billion) in American financial history. He repeatedly sent warnings and explanations to the SEC investigators, most of which turned out to be exactly right. They ignored all of it I an era of deregulation, and never even investigated Madoff to see if there might be anything amiss.
The term “great corporations” had been in common use to indicate large corporations with no implications of quality as “great” would imply today. Search for “great corporations” to see the common usage.
Barry Bonds was a star professional baseball player whose accomplishments were aided by taking illegal drugs. He lied about his use of drugs, and the Department made a very large effort over years to finally prosecute him. However during that time there were almost no prosecutions of the thousands of bankers and financiers who had lied, cheated, forged legal documents and in the process almost permanently ruined the American economy—the Great Recession of 2008. The Justice Department claimed that white collar cases are very complex and take longer to prepare prosecutions. Critics claimed that there are so many law breakers, that the government does not want to prosecute all the felons, but just go after a few, and this is easier if time has gone by and public anger has receded or been forgotten.
The Senator asked Justice Department officials if the reason that there had been no prosecutions of any major financial figures associated with the Meltdown of 2008 and the Great Recession is that they were “too big to jail.” This appears to be the first public official to use this phrase. See {637991} for the Attorney General’s sad but truthful reply.
Mary Lovelace Schapiro served as the 29th Chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). She was appointed by President Barack Obama, unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate, and assumed the Chairship on January 27, 2009. She is the first woman to be the permanent Chair of the SEC. In 2009, Forbes ranked her the 56th most powerful woman in the world.
