Abelson agrees with me on Arthur Levitt. He is the greatest SEC chair, ever!
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interactive.wsj.com
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JANUARY 22, 2001
'Bye, Old Bill
By Alan Abelson
What a great eight years!
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Someone in the Clinton Administration we'll honestly miss is Arthur Levitt. Pure and simple, we think he has been the best SEC chairman ever. Now, on reflection, given the likes of so many of his predecessors, that may seem like faint praise. (One, we recall, was most famous for chasing sweet young things around his desk, another because he had his nickname emblazoned on his socks.) But, Arthur really has been a splendid chairman.
It helped a great deal, obviously, that he came from the Street, that he knew markets and, just as important, knew all the tricks of the trade. He was unfailingly on the side of the individual investor. In striving to give the sucker an even break, he occasionally stirred the ire of the brokerage and mutual-fund crowd, and we can't think of anything nicer to say about him. The irony is, of course, that he invariably did those plump and prosperous brokers and mutual-fund types a huge favor by saving them from themselves.
Arthur held the job longer than anyone ever had and he deserves great credit for helping the securities business to navigate some strange and quite hazardous waters. On his watch, the markets and the investor population exploded, Nasdaq swelled incredibly, the Internet arrived and with it, all kinds of trading innovations and evils (a/k/a fun and games). And with the stock market laying claim to the title of America's favorite pastime, virtually every attempt to keep the game reasonably fair and equitable ran into opposition from one congressional imbecile or another.
Arthur obviously didn't collar every rascal, fumigate every chat room or do more than make the playing field a little less tilted. But overall, he had notable success against the rascals, in bringing a touch of rationality to online chaos and in fighting the good fight to put all investors on equal footing. They may not give out medals for this sort of thing, but he surely merits a hearty thanks and best wishes for an easy reentry into the real world |
