Selling America Short

Richard Sauer has written a book, published by Wiley, entitled "Selling America Short: The SEC and Market Contrarians in the Age of Absurdity."

The official publication date is late next month, but if you're impatient, you can read large chunks of it via the amazon webpage.

So: who is Richard Sauer? He is a very prominent securities lawyer, a partner at Vinson & Elkins LLP, who is also an adjunct professor at Georgetown Law. Most pertinent perhaps for the book, he was recently on the SEC staff. He was Assistant Director of the Division of Enforcement in the Securities and Exchange Commission.

So should the title of the book be: Why we didn't catch Madoff? Well, no ... his attention is elsewhere, and on another day I'll discuss his thesis. But for today, I'll content myself with quoting a brief passage relating to Bernie.

"Sad to say, it is not realistic to hope we can greatly improve the effectiveness of our regulatory agencies. Talent runs out of the government lke water through a colander, pulled out by the bigger dollars available, or pushed out by administrative folly. ...The SEC's failure to catch Bernie Madoff until he confessed was not a fluke. So poorly do government agencies understand the entities they regulate, they can sometimes be confounded by even thinly disguised frauds."