Hiring people to take up difficult
positions will always be a challenge, no less when you’re picking a nominee to
be the head of the SEC, but it would help if the nominee didn’t butter their
bread by defending the very characters they are about to be tasked to hold to
account. It would be wrong to say that Mary Jo White is beholden to the
interests of Wall street, but a
considerable portion of her resume suggest that may be true.
Before the case can be made for
White being a poor pick for the SEC post, it would be wise to point out why she
is up the consideration in the first place. Mary Jo White is an accomplished
prosecutor who had prosecuted infamous mobster John Gotti and the terrorists involved
in the first attack against the World Trade Center[1].
However the real problem lies not
with who she has prosecuted but who she has defended. In her time in the
private sector, White had defended major figures on Wall street including “Kenneth
Lewis, the former chairman and chief executive of Bank of America, and John
Mack, who held the top job at Morgan Stanley”[2].
White also defended (inexpicably) “nine independent directors” of Rupert Murdoch’s
News Corporation in the middle of the phone hacking scandal in 2011[3].
Why White’s background matters
so much is that after five years since that financial crisis that brought the
country to its knees, no CEO or chief executive has seen the inside of a jail
cell and with the nomination of a former director of the Nasdaq for the position of leader of the SEC, an
organisation seen by many to be soft touch, the prospects for change are slim[4].
Long standing issues in
American politics come to the fore such as the revolving between the private
and public sector, for which White’s accomplished career serves as a prime
example. This is why David Sirota in
Salon notes that :
“With this revolving door spinning
so fast,… it has created a culture whereby prosecutors and SEC officials have an
incentive not to enforce the law. Simply put, if you know your next lucrative
job is on Wall Street, you aren’t all that interested in prosecuting Wall
Street, because that might limit your private-sector career prospects”.
In sum, Mary Jo White has
had a sterling career in both public and private sectors but her involvement in
both and her probable ascent into a key role in regulating the US financial
industry leaves much to be desired when she will go to battle against Wall
street figures.
[1] D.
Rushe, 2013, Mob Prosecutor Mary Jo White to be nominated to lead SEC, http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/jan/24/mary-jo-white-nominated-sec
[2] J.
Cassidy, 2013, Two reasons why mary jo white is a bad choice for the SEC, http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2013/01/send-mary-jo-white-to-justice-not-the-sec.html
[3]
K.Rushton. 2011. Phone hacking: News Corp hires former US attorney general to
fight lawsuits, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/8650694/Phone-hacking-News-Corp-hires-former-US-attorney-general-to-fight-lawsuits.html
[4] D.
Rushe, 2013, Mob Prosecutor Mary Jo White to be nominated to lead SEC, http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/jan/24/mary-jo-white-nominated-sec
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