Not many people know the meaning of “swap” (as in a financial hedge, not flea market). Only the most sophisticated investors actually understand the complexities of buffering risk by exchanging cash flows. Under Dodd–Frank, however, federal regulators have been tasked with assuming control of this market, in which hundreds of …
President Obama, moving quickly to complete the lineup for his second-term regulatory team, nominated attorney Mary Jo White yesterday to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The selection is a critical one, as the agency is still struggling to complete the rulemakings required under the Dodd–Frank financial regulation act, …
The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times had front-page stories yesterday on the Securities and Exchange Commission suing the China subsidiaries of major accounting firms for not cooperating with investigations into possible fraud at Chinese clients. The famous multinational auditors are complaining, the Chinese firms are complaining, the Chinese …
The now defunct Countrywide Financial Corp. issued hundreds of discounted loans to government officials and Fannie Mae employees in order to build clout with influential policymakers, a new House report shows. The report, issued by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, details several Countrywide VIP loans that were given …
The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a subpoena against electric vehicle company ECOtality in October of 2010, requesting documents relating to its investigation into insider trading by some of the company’s top executives. The name of at least one of those individuals has now been revealed. ECOtality is a poster …
The misguided federal policy to concentrate the U.S. mortgage finance industry in two huge government-sponsored entities was underscored again this morning when the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged six former Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives with misleading investors and Congress about the amount of poor-credit-quality mortgages each entity …
Exactly 10 years ago today, the Enron Corporation filed for bankruptcy after it was revealed that it had blatantly falsified its earnings statements for many years. Although most of the accounting irregularities that caused its collapse were already illegal, Congress overreacted and passed Sarbanes–Oxley, a massive and deeply flawed accounting …
You would think that any regulation that could affect a major part of the economy and cost industry and/or consumers millions of dollars to comply with would be based on rigorous and consistent economic analysis. After all, how else would regulators know the actual effect of their proposals and whether …
