What would William O. Douglas think of
current SEC Chairman Cox?
Blawgletter took former SEC commissioner (and current Stanford law professor) Joseph A. Grundfest to task last week for misunderestimating the true reasons for a recent fall-off in securities class actions. The professor's arguments, Blawgletter believed, aimed at glorifying government enforcement of securities laws while casting asparagus on the private kind. And the timing of Mr. Grundfest's opinion piece for the WSJ struck us as, well, a bit odd.
Until today. The NYT -- arch-nemesis of the WSJ -- reports that Mr. Grundfest's former agency, under new Chairman Christopher Cox, has launched a multiple-prong strategy to reduce class actions on behalf of investors who lose their shirts as a result of fraud by corporate insiders. See "S.E.C. Seeks to Curtail Investor Suits". One prong would raise pleading requirements to a level all-but-impossible to satisfy. Another would reduce or eliminate the liability of auditors for helping cook corporate books.
Co-inky-dink? Blawgletter makes the dots. You connect them as you wish.
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