SEC Porn Scandal Almost as Obscene as Wall Street

Thanks to an owlish looking Republican senator named Charles Grassley, we now know that while America's financial system was being pillaged in a bigger swindle than all bank robberies ever committed combined, at least several dozen high ranking employees at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) were spending their days viewing pornography. Instead of watching out for the American people, regulators at the SEC were sitting at taxpayer supplied desks using taxpayer supplied computers to get turned on sexually.

As one of the clever sidekicks on my morning radio show, Armstrong and Getty, aptly summed up the SEC porn scandal this morning, "It was like Nero fiddling while Rome burned."

SEC "watchdogs" watching porn

What's ironic is that the Obama administration and Congress are trying to pass legislation to reform Wall Street to prevent another financial meltdown, regulations that would be enforced by the SEC. Yet stiffer laws are useless if the people charged with enforcing them are busy watching porn or otherwise twiddling their thumbs.

Those supporting Wall Street reform legislation have questioned the coincidental timing of the SEC porn scandal story breaking this week. Republicans like Charles Grassley are not a big fan of the federal government regulating anything except abortion and gay marriage. In a too-obvious spin attempt, Daryl Issa, a Republican Congressmen from California, clumsily showed his party's hand when he warned, "This stunning report should make everyone question the wisdom of moving forward with plans to give regulators like the SEC even more widespread authority."

So, does this mean we should not have strict laws against assault and murder because some cops spend too much time at the doughnut shop instead of chasing bad guys?

For those living in the world of black and white, the answer would probably be yes.

For the rest of us gray worlders who believe problems can be analyzed and solved in a reasonable manner, why not impose more stringent scrutiny on Wall Street and its regulators? Instead of shutting down the SEC because some of its employees viewed porn, G-rated web filters could be placed on SEC employees' computers to block porn sites from downloading. And, while the guys in IT are at it, they should probably block the addictive games like World of Warcraft and Everquest, too.

Regulating the regulators

Even with these safeguards, the hard drives of SEC and other federal employees' computers should be frequently and randomly audited by a revolving committee (to avoid cronyism), and those people who excessively use their computers for activities not related to their work, which would include surfing eBay or playing Farmville on Facebook, would lose their jobs and their pensions.

The SEC porn scandal may partly explain why all the whistle blower reports to the SEC about Bernie Madoff landed in the round file instead of being investigated, or worse, how Wall Street firms pulled the wool over everyone's eyes until they had to be bailed out to the tune of billions of taxpayers' dollars to avert "Depression 2, The Sequel."

What would be truly obscene is for the SEC to return to business as usual, with or without stricter regulations on Wall Street.

Sources:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703876404575200993259725002.html
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2010/04/eye_opener_porn_and_federal_wo.html