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Blogfest 2005 - Jul 6, 2006 - Printable Version
- "ALL INVESTORS ARE EQUAL, BUT SOME ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS" – SEC eliminates integrity in the stock market
by Mark Faulk
Remember the good old days, and how we all used to love to remind the SEC of their Mission Statement...the one that promises "to protect investors and maintain the integrity of the securities market"? Well, they've solved the little problem of "maintaining integrity" in classic Orwellian fashion. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, after the animals take over the farm from the ruthless and greedy farm owners, they make a list of rules called “THE SEVEN COMMANDMENTS.” I remember as a teenager seeing the transition as each rule is slowly edited and rewritten to fit the whims of the pigs, who have assumed the role of leadership on the farm, and succumb to the lifestyle of gluttony and greed that consumed their predecessors. I can clearly recall sitting in stunned disbelief, and in fact, I still get a cold chill just thinking about the ending of that cautionary tale of greed and totalitarianism run amuck. One commandment after another is changed to fit the immoral behavior of the greedy pigs: “No animal shall kill another animal” is changed to read "No animal shall kill any other animal without cause." “No animal shall drink alcohol” is changed to read “No animal shall drink alcohol to excess.”
Later in the book, it was realized by some of the more observant animals that it didn’t seem to matter who was in charge of the farm, that they still suffered unfairly under the pigs and the dogs who had moved into the farmhouse, just as they did when the farmers were in control. Orwell put it this way: “Somehow it seemed as though the farm had grown richer without making the animals themselves any richer— except, of course, for the pigs and the dogs.”
And finally, in a final disregard for the welfare of the “common farm animals,” and in a chilling display of totalitarianism, favoritism, and unbridled greed, the Seven Commandments were altered one last time, to read simply "ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL, BUT SOME ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS."
Today, while researching for the book that I’m supposed to be writing at this very moment (instead of this commentary), I felt that exact feeling of stunned disbelief, that same cold chill ran up my spine. I was getting ready to quote (for the thousandth time) the SEC’s Mission Statement, which reads, simply and clearly, "The primary mission of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is to protect investors and maintain the integrity of the securities market." A noble mission, and one that has drawn considerable fire of late from the average investor, who feels as if the rules are clearly slanted in favor of protecting the status quo, and that integrity has been sacrificed so that the ultra-rich and those on Wall Street can benefit unfairly at the expense of the “common farm animal,” I mean the “common investor.”
Then, I went to the SEC website, and looked up the mission statement, fully expecting to find:
"The primary mission of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is to protect investors and maintain the integrity of the securities market."
Instead, this is what I read, and this is when I once again felt that feeling of stunned disbelief, and that cold chill coursed through my entire body:
“The mission of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is to protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation.”.
That couldn’t be right. I had to be just looking in the wrong place, this was too Orwellian to possibly be true. I did a search of the SEC website – ironically enough, “maintaining the integrity of the securities market” was nowhere to be found. So I called the SEC, and asked them, almost apologetically, if they could lead me to the real mission statement, the one that preaches integrity. It had to be there somewhere. I spoke with Senior Counsel Chris Wilson, and in all honesty, he seemed almost as taken aback as I was. I read him the original mission statement, and asked him if the SEC had indeed, eliminated integrity from their mission statement. He looked it up, read the same words that I had read, and said that he would have to “get back to me” on that.
Twenty minutes later, Wilson called me back with the official statement: “In 2005, Chairman Cox requested that the mission statement be changed to better reflect the current goals of the SEC.” And so, on December 23, 2005, with the stroke of a pen, or in this case, a few clicks of a keyboard, “to maintain the integrity of the securities market” was officially eliminated from the SEC’s mission, and replaced with “to maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation.” On that day, what most investors had already begun to suspect, and in fact, what many of us already knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, became official - integrity in the stock market has been sacrificed in the name of an orderly and efficient market.
So the next time you see Annette Nazareth, or any of the other SEC commissioners in a public forum, or the next time you hear Chairman Cox talk about fairness in our stock market system, think about The Seven Commandments in Animal Farm, about how some animals…and people as well…are “more equal than others,” and see if you can recall, word-for-word, when the Mission Statement of the SEC included a little thing called “integrity.”
"No question now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."
~George Orwell, Animal Farm
This article is also posted at The Sanity Check, along with an excellent comment forum, at:
http://www.thesanitycheck.com/Blogs/MarkFaulksBlog/tabid/86/Default.aspx
Mark Faulk is the Editor of The Faulking Truth, and the author of the upcoming book about the CMKX saga entitled "The Naked Truth: Counterfeiting the American Dream." Because of the massive amounts of research required to complete this project, and so that the events of the next few weeks can be included in the book as well, it has been rescheduled for release at the end of July or early August. For more information on the book and on the stock market scandal, go to http://www.faulkingtruth.com , and to pre-order your copy, go to http://www.theownersgroupinc.com/cart/
The CFRN.net radio show that airs every Friday at 9:30 AM EST with Mark Faulk and Debi Kionte can be accessed live at http://www.cfrn.net/ and is available for download at http://www.streetiq.com/dir/CFRN.shtml
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