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To: Jeffrey S. Mitchell who wrote (105794)	1/16/2009 3:42:24 PM
From: scion	Respond to of 122087

Schapiro Pledges Vigilance as SEC Chief JANUARY 16, 2009 By KARA SCANNELL online.wsj.com WASHINGTON -- President-elect Barack Obama's nominee to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission pledged to take the handcuffs off the agency's enforcement division and said she would explore more oversight of hedge funds. At the confirmation hearing before the Senate Banking Committee, Mary Schapiro also defended her track record as head of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or Finra, Wall Street's self-policing organization. In a page-one article Thursday, The Wall Street Journal detailed how Ms. Schapiro has infrequently pursued tough action against big Wall Street firms. Amid the mortgage crisis, Finra often filed tiny cases against small players. During the past few years of Ms. Schapiro's career as a regulator, which earns her more than $3 million a year, enforcement fines against financial firms have plunged. And Finra missed Bernard Madoff's alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme. The committee will hold a hearing on the Madoff fraud on Jan. 27. "I can be as aggressive an enforcer as anybody has ever been at the head of the SEC," Ms. Schapiro said. She said "there can be no sacred cows" and she would go "with full force" against anyone who commits fraud. Ms. Schapiro told legislators that the Journal article "presented a completely unfair picture of my record in particular with respect to enforcement and enforcement cases." She also said one of her top priorities would be to review and bolster the SEC's examination process, which was also criticized for missing the Madoff fraud despite having performed multiple reviews over the past decade. Ms. Schapiro, who has support of Democrats, is expected to be confirmed by the Senate. Ms. Schapiro is set to take the reins of the agency at a time when its reputation has been pummeled, in part from its failed oversight of Wall Street firms. Congress and the new administration are weighing a new regulatory structure for financial markets, and it isn't clear what place the SEC will have. Ms. Schapiro said the SEC's current responsibilities of ensuring investor protection, accountability and disclosure should be preserved in any revamp. Financial firms can expect more oversight and regulation from the SEC. She said she would "absolutely support proceeding again with registration of hedge funds." The SEC had required most hedge fund advisers to register with the agency and be subject to inspections and exams, but a federal appeals court threw out the rule in 2006. She also said she would look closely at "procedural hurdles" hindering the enforcement process, and expressed caution about moving too swiftly toward adapting international accounting standards. Ms. Schapiro also said she would take up the proposal, favored by labor groups, to allow shareholders to nominate their own directors on corporate ballots. The SEC has struggled with the issue for years. The Madoff scandal was the focus of several questions. The Senate committee has asked the SEC for information about past exams it performed as well as those done by Finra and its predecessor bodies. Ms. Schapiro maintained that Mr. Madoff had two businesses -- a brokerage matching institutional buyers and sellers of stock, and a money-management business. She said that under her watch, Finra examined the former and had no authority to look at the latter. But Sen. Christopher Dodd, chairman of the committee, noted that the organization charged with returning money to Madoff investors, the Securities Investors Protection Corp., found there was only one Madoff entity, the brokerage firm. "One of the real tragedies and one of the real lessons of this tragedy is that we have this stovepiped approach to regulation that allows misconduct to take place out of the sight of at least some of the regulators," Ms. Schapiro said. She added Finra never received any tips about Mr. Madoff. Write to Kara Scannell at kara.scannell@wsj.com Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page C3 online.wsj.com

To: Jeffrey S. Mitchell who wrote (105794)	1/16/2009 3:57:19 PM
From: scion	Respond to of 122087

The 10 most unethical people in business Commentary: Magazine hits those whose flubs have tarnished financial world By Thomas Kostigen, MarketWatch Last update: 8:35 p.m. EST Jan. 15, 2009 marketwatch.com SANTA MONICA, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Ethisphere magazine has released its list of the 100 most ethical people in business. While I was intrigued by those deemed the most influential (Liu Qi, chairman of the organizing committee of the 2008 Olympics, Neelie Kroes, European commissioner for competition, and the man formerly known as Heinrich Kieber, a former computer technician for LGT bank who blew the whistle on corruption, among a hodgepodge of others), I was most interested in its list of the most unethical. I have my own unethical list, and 50% of Ethisphere's list pretty much jibes with it (Bush administration figures litter mine). In any event, here they are, as Ethisphere defines them: "The top 10 individuals that have influenced business ethics through professional flubs." 1. Bernard Madoff. Turns out a lot of people were suspicious of Madoff's ability to deliver high percentage returns like clockwork for long periods of time. It also turns out that he allegedly ran a $50 billion Ponzi scheme that, when discovered, ruined many a life savings. It's not yet clear how many people at Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities knew of the scam, but it's clear that Madoff was the mastermind. 2. David Colby. Colby, the former CFO of Wellpoint, was caught carrying on multiple affairs, even once texting "ABORT!!" to one of his many girlfriends after discovering she was pregnant. He carried on relationships with over 30 women and proposed to at least 12 of them. 3. Rod Blagojevich. Blagojevich is the governor of Illinois who allegedly tried to "sell" the Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama. Some reports say he tried to trade the seat for ambassadorships, money and positions within pro-union groups and even a $150,000 salary for his wife. 4. Heinz-Joachim Neubürger, Karl-Hermann Baumann and Johannes Feldmayer. The two former CFOs and former chairman of Siemens, respectively, got busted over bribery and their company was fined billions. The bribes that they paid to earn contracts could not have been worth more than the $1.4 billion settlement the company agreed to pay. 5. Ted Stevens. Stevens is the former senator from Alaska who was found guilty of failing to report gifts given to him by various contractors. He faces up to five years for each of the seven counts against him. His sentencing hearing is scheduled for February 25. 6. Bruno A Kaelin. Kaelin, a former senior vice president and head of corporate compliance at Alstom, was arrested in Switzerland in August following a joint Franco-Swiss-Italian investigation into his alleged role in running a bribery slush fund and laundering hundreds of millions of euros. Prior to that, Kaelin was convicted in a separate bribery case in Italy involving payoffs to two officials of the Italian electric company Enel. 7. Adam Vitale. Vitale was sentenced to 30 months in prison and $180,000 restitution to be paid to AOL after he found a way to spam 1.2 million AOL users in a way that avoided being caught by AOL's spam filter. Vitale also had 22 prior convictions, including running an online prostitution ring through Craigslist. 8. Robert Rubin. Rubin, like it or not, became one of the faces tied to the 2008 financial crisis. His position of deregulation when he was Treasury secretary is now faulted by some for many of the problems of today. He also became the fall guy for Citigroup's business strategy of leveraging more risk. 9. Marco Benatti. Benatti, a former Italian director of advertising for WPP, was accused of libel last year for calling WPP chief executive Sir Martin Sorrell a "mad dwarf" and was alleged to have secretly pocketed millions of pounds from a deal he helped to broker. WPP's lawyers, claiming up to 12.5 million pounds for breach of "fiduciary duty," alleged at a court hearing in London that Benatti was the "secret beneficiary" of most of the proceeds from a 17 million pound takeover of Media Club, an Italian advertising company. Benatti sued back, alleging unfair dismissal. He argued that he was really let go because he had fallen out with Daniela Weber, WPP's chief operating officer in Italy, with whom he alleged Sorrell was having a relationship. In last year's libel case, Sorrell accused Benatti of circulating a computer-generated image showing him with Weber labeled "the mad dwarf and the nympho schizo." 10. James M. DiBlasio. DiBlasio makes the list for going on a three-day bender and hacking into the computers of his company, Ski.com, while drunk. Fortunately for him, the CEO of Ski.com wasn't too angry about the situation and decided not to pursue charges. If you are looking for those influencing business in a positive way, check out www.ethisphere.com. And let's hope 2009 is a better year for ethics (although it's already off to a rough start). Thomas M. Kostigen is the author of You Are Here: Exposing The Vital Link Between What We Do and What That Does to Our Planet (HarperOne). www.readyouarehere.com marketwatch.com

To: Jeffrey S. Mitchell who wrote (105794)	1/16/2009 5:18:11 PM
From: anniebonny	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 122087

"From that point forward it's just a matter of figuring out what I need to cover the outflow and what I need to fund my lifestyle." Why say "mockingly" - wouldn't that work? Wonder how often he encouraged them never to touch the principal. Bet not too many ever touched it - which would help continue the scam for so long. Too bad the market went all to hell - and people wanted their money out - bet it would have continued til the day he died!