NYT this Sunday has a a feature that goes a long way to support my feeling that Rep.Oxley is a WS flunky, he should list his employer not as the citizens of Ohio but the Wall Street instead.O, wow, he is the head of the House Finance Committee.The Big Boys still OWN America. nytimes.com first page of 3 page feature--it is a free site--just register.
<< A Friend of Main St., or Wall St.?
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON
o many investors, Michael G. Oxley is the Ohio Republican who put partisan politics aside and helped write legislation meant to restore investor confidence after the worst spate of corporate misconduct since the 1929 crash. "We will not tolerate those whose greed and deception damage not only our financial marketplace but also our good will," Mr. Oxley said as President Bush signed the Sarbanes-Oxley bill into law in July. "Not just money, but character, counts in America," he added.
But in fact, Mr. Oxley, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and one of the best friends that the industry has in Washington, has worked hard to keep it from facing new regulation intended to protect investors. Early in the process, he opposed the legislation that would become Sarbanes-Oxley, preferring a softer approach to accounting overhaul. And he shrugged off the conflicts of interest among Wall Street analysts until that issue became unavoidable.
Most recently, he opposed the nomination of a strong investor advocate to an accounting oversight board created by the legislation he helped to write. Instead, Mr. Oxley supported William H. Webster, whose selection for the post is now the subject of multiple investigations.
Mr. Oxley's role as reformer, according to people who have dealt with him over the years, is decidedly out of character. As an industry champion, he and his political action committee receive large contributions from Wall Street firms, banks and the accounting profession. He and his staff also travel widely at the expense of financial services companies and their lobbyists.
"Mike Oxley is one of the nicest members of Congress," said Arthur Levitt, the former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and author of "Take On the Street: What Wall Street and Corporate America Don't Want You to Know." "But everyone in the securities industry recognizes him as a stalwart friend who will stand in the way of almost every investor reform. He was uncomfortable with just about every pro-investor thing we did."
With Harvey L. Pitt, the current S.E.C. chairman, under heavy fire to resign after a series of political gaffes, and his agency in disarray, some investors are growing concerned that their desires for additional overhaul are not being recognized in Washington.
Now Mr. Oxley came to help write an overhaul bill that he had initially opposed is a familiar story to Washington watchers. Like many other politicians, Mr. Oxley sensed that after WorldCom's collapse in an accounting scandal, Washington had to do something to protect shareholders from corporate and accounting chicanery.
Now the consensus has shifted back to a belief that corporate malfeasance was limited to a handful of companies, said Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit research group that monitors money in politics. In such a climate, Mr. Oxley felt comfortable working to scuttle the nomination of John H. Biggs, former chairman of the giant TIAA-CREF pension fund, to the accounting oversight board. Mr. Webster, who got the job, is now under a cloud for his membership on the audit committee of U.S. Technologies, a company facing accusations of fraud.
"Webster is the tough cop that the job demands," Mr. Oxley said when Mr. Webster was appointed on Oct. 25.
On Friday, Mr. Oxley reiterated his support. He declined to comment for this article, but a spokeswoman said that Mr. Oxley "has a long record of accomplishment on behalf of individual investors."
"He represents 525,000 of them in Ohio, with whom he communicates regularly," she said. In addition, he supported pay raises for the S.E.C. and saved investors money by pushing for decimal trading in stocks.
But Mr. Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity said: "Millions of Americans have lost their nest eggs or seen their retirement savings diminished, and we're getting political rhetoric from Washington that it's a few bad apples. The idea that after all this Washington did a collective yawn is nothing short of offensive. The only people they seem to be talking to are the people who funnel the money to their campaigns or who don't want to be regulated."
Continued
1 | 2 | 3 | Next>> |
