In the past few years, investors and tax payers have been victims of securities fraud from WorldCom and Enron, to Bernie Madoff and the shenanigans of Allied Capital. Nevertheless, citizens continue to pay taxes to fund government regulators such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to help mitigate or prevent such fraud. However, there has been a growing scrutiny by investors and citizens regarding the competency of the SEC. The SEC counters that it needs more funds from citizens to be effective.
Well, in December 2008, ProPublica noted an investigative report revealing unacceptable behavior and predilections of viewing felonious pornography by several SEC staff, including senior officials earning annual salaries of $222k. The report and blog went virtually unnoticed until a few months ago when the Washington Times wrote about the SEC’s porn problem and more recently several bloggers and organizations including the Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, TechCrunch, and Gawker provided further details of the SEC’s illicit behaviors.
