SEC

Zachary Goldfarb reports in today's Washington Post about the SEC's efforts to reform its enforcement image.  There are plenty of examples given that illustrate how far the SEC has to go, and I am not going to argue that enforcement shouldn't be better and that securities fraud is okay.

But lax enforcement was not the SEC's main contribution to the financial crisis.  The place where the SEC screwed up, and the revelation that should have shaken things up 18 months ago, was this event, reported by Stephen Labaton in The New York Times: