|  | | 2008 News and Press Releases | | |
HEADLINE NEWS:
SEC Overhaul Bid by Bush Condemned by SEC Chairmen (Update2)
Jesse Westbrook
Bloomberg. April 8, 2008
_________________________________________________________________________
EXCERPT: Three former leaders of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission say the Bush administration's proposed overhaul of financial regulation threatens to weaken the agency, a process that may already be under way with help from the SEC itself. David Ruder, Arthur Levitt and William Donaldson, all former SEC chairmen, said a Treasury Department push for the agency to adopt the regulatory approach of the much smaller Commodity Futures Trading Commission would be a mistake. It's ``not useful'' for the SEC to have ``a prudential-based attitude in which regulators solve problems by discussing them informally with market participants and ask them to change,'' Ruder, a Republican SEC chairman under President Ronald Reagan, said in an interview. ``We have to have an enforcement approach.'' Levitt, a Democrat who led the SEC from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton and who supports an SEC and CFTC merger, says the terms proposed by Treasury are ``wrongheaded'' because they would give the trading commission ``primacy.'' SEC Chairman Christopher Cox, 55, hasn't endorsed a merger between the two agencies, said SEC spokesman John Nester. ``He would insist on a system of oversight that best protects investors, promotes fair markets and facilitates capital formation.'' Treasury's proposal, issued in a March 31 report, comes as lawmakers question whether the SEC has already eased up in fighting fraud. The Federal Reserve now shares oversight of investment banks, and the SEC is moving to transfer some responsibilities for monitoring accounting rules and securities sales to overseas regulators. |
|
|
