Richard Cohen: Lessons from Bernie: The SEC was asleep

In his own telling, Bernard Madoff was a version of the serial killer who leaves notes saying, "Stop me before I kill again." In Madoff's case, he was waiting for the Securities and Exchange Commission to ask him how he took in billions of dollars, never invested any of it and was reporting steady investment earnings.

[jake lobrow]

Now that Bernie and all the other "talent" on Wall Street have brought us to this point where China, India, Russia, etc, are bailing out of the US dollar, I think we need to end the "neo con" foreign policy, and get the US troops not only out of Iraq, but Afghanistan as well.

Now that we're broke because Wall Street grew money for themselves with their financial alchemy instead of directing money for usefull investment into the real wealth producing physical economy, and other countries are now reprioritizing buying our debt which allowed us to live beyond our means for all these years, we, like the Soviets before us, will have to pull back in our foreign misadventures.

[Robert J G Jackson Sr]

Mr. Cohen's complaints about the SEC and it's failures regarding Mr. Madoff are well founded. The simple fact is that gross incompetence in government circles allowed him to continue his Ponzi scheme, and bilk people out of billions of dollars. The real question now, is whether or not you want to increase the size and scope of that incompetent government, and to give those same bureaucrats trillions more of your money to spend through schemes like Cap and Trade or the current Healthcare proposals. Do you want to continue to allow that same incompetent government and it's bureaucrats to own 60% of GM and 10% of Chrysler, and large perecentages of firms like Goldman and AIG? Those same bureaucrats were perfectly willing to spend the cost of a new 747-400 to obtain a new helicopter for the President to ride in back and forth to Andrews Air Force Base. The only way to control government is to control the amount of money it is given to operate with.