The New York Times ran a piece yesterday titled "S.E.C. Facing Deeper Trouble." The most revealing paragraph was near the end:

"Earlier this year, Congress gave the commission a modest $30 million budget increase, to about $468 million, so that the agency could begin to hire an additional 100 professionals and enlarge its staff of about 3,100. In recent years, it has taken in fees of more than $2 billion a year, but Congress has rejected attempts to let the S.E.C. support itself directly because lawmakers are reluctant to give up their influence over the agency's agenda through its budget." [emphasis mine]

I always wondered why the S.E.C. was starved for funds when they nick everyone for a few cents on every sale (the SEC charges a fee at a rate equal to 15/10,000 of one percent of the total dollar amount of securities sold), in addition to all the other fees, fines, and penalties they collect.

Imagine the kind of employees the S.E.C. could attract if they had a budget of $2 billion a year and were able to offer salaries competitive with, maybe even better than, those offered in the private sector? Wouldn't the top graduates of every law and business school in the country then be jockeying for a staff position?

Let's see, where would I work if I had offers from Skadden, Arps, Goldman Sachs and... the S.E.C., a place where "[t]he secretarial staff is so small that many senior analysts spend huge amounts of time simply photocopying documents. Officials also labor under an antiquated computer system that makes it difficult to perform the most rudimentary kinds of analysis of financial information." Hmm, that's a tough one.

Previous Entry >>> Revised Idiot Wave Count