Update 2: More evidence of favoritism: On June 11, 2010, the SEC dropped an investigation into Daniel Loeb’s Third Point Capital, one of the hedge funds alleged to be part of a group of hedge funds and speculators that colluded with corrupt journalists, analysts, and regulators to “take down” targeted businesses through illegal short selling and other fraudulent or manipulative practices. The probe began in 2008.
Update: I’m adding a link to a report from Judd Bagley at Deep Capture on the story behind the SEC’s claim on its exemption.
ORIGINAL POST
Comes news that the SEC has now been placed beyond the reach of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. FOX reports (hat-tip to Daily Bell commenter, John Accord):
“Under a little-noticed provision of the recently passed financial-reform legislation, the Securities and Exchange Commission no longer has to comply with virtually all requests for information releases from the public, including those filed under the Freedom of Information Act.
The law, signed last week by President Obama, exempts the SEC from disclosing records or information derived from “surveillance, risk assessments, or other regulatory and oversight activities.” Given that the SEC is a regulatory body, the provision covers almost every action by the agency, lawyers say. Congress and federal agencies can request information, but the public cannot.
That argument comes despite the President saying that one of the cornerstones of the sweeping new legislation was more transparent financial markets. Indeed, in touting the new law, Obama specifically said it would “increase transparency in financial dealings.”
The SEC cited the new law Tuesday in a FOIA action brought by FOX Business Network. Steven Mintz, founding partner of law firm Mintz & Gold LLC in New York, lamented what he described as “the backroom deal that was cut between Congress and the SEC to keep the SEC’s failures secret. The only losers here are the American public.”
My Comment:
The politicization of the SEC, never in doubt, now has a legal seal. What to expect? Well, for starters, vengeance against political foes…..
Just as the Afghan war, per Wikileaks, is now only about Bush era war crimes (nothing to do with Obama, no sir, noway..), financial fraud is now all about conservatives….especially conservatives who once financed the “Swift boating” of establishment liberal hopeful, Ketchup king-in-law and heart-throb of the Eurocracy, John Kerry.
Aside: I imagine Patrick Byrne, also conservative, also a financier of the Swift-boaters, and also a repeated target of the SEC, might find this development of urgent interest….
Thus, while mega-billions worth of fraud, racketeering, and outright looting of the Treasury is overlooked with feigned befuddlement (“mistakes were made but there was no wrong-doing” etc., etc.), the SEC does away with the dummy act when it comes to political opponents.
Charles and Sam Wyly are now allegedly guilty of securities fraud of a value of “more than $550 million.”
We rush to add that we’re not defending any one here. By all means, let fraudsters fry, whether large or small, only don’t tell us that there’s no stink…we’ve sensitive nostrils, we smell it.
To wit., by an odd coincidence, $550 million is the sum of the penalty slapped on Goldman Sachs, a penalty widely believed to be several galaxies short of true come-uppance for this lynchpin of the shadow government.
“On July 29th, 2010, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Charles and Sam Wyly with fraud for violating federal securities laws governing ownership and trading of securities by corporate insiders. The Wyly brothers are alleged to have profited by more than $550 million in undisclosed gains. The charges state that this occurred through the trading of stock in public companies that the brothers were serving as board members. They allegedly, through hidden entities located in foreign jurisdictions, concealed their ownership and trading of those securities.”
So, rewind a bit. Just after various shills for the financial establishment (they know who they are) rush out to scold us sanctimoniously that a breath of criticism for Goldman Sachs is prima-facie evidence of Nazism, and even as assorted Sri Lankan, Chinese, and French miscreants are trotted out as fall guys and red herrings for the bamboozlement of nativist “red-necks” (I use the term ironically) for whom every problem can be stopped at the border, the public is served up “fraud” in the persons of two bunglers who, if they are guilty, are guilty of offenses that are largely irrelevant and petty next to the monstrous deception of the public by the banking mafia.
We always knew Justice was blind-folded. We didn’t know she was deaf and dumb too.