Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility

A Petition to Fire SEC Chair Gary Gensler Has Almost 25,000 Signatures

Posted on by Going Concern News Desk

“Al from Boston” and 23,919 other individuals would like to see SEC Chairman Gary Gensler gone, namely for obstruction of justice, incompetence, and screwing over retail investors.

From the change.org petition:

SEC Chairman Gary Gensler is complicit in criminal activities perpetrated by Citadel Securities, Citadel the Market Maker in naked short selling and dark pool abuse. Mr. Gensler is guilty of obstruction of justice due to his lack of enforcement of the laws pertaining to naked short selling and lack of competent oversight of market maker activities. Due to Mr. Gensler’s crimes, millions of retail investors were defrauded of countless MILLIONS of dollars. I’m referring to working class, middle class and poor folks as well as institutional investors. Mr. Gensler needs to step down as the chairman, and a thorough, detailed , forensic analysis and investigation into Citadel Securities and Citadel Market Maker. This cannot go unpunished. Rise up and sign!

Has a single change.org petition ever accomplished anything? Not that we’re aware of. Well, good luck to them anyway.

Related Posts

Right Now KPMG CEO John Veihmeyer Is Locked in His Office Watching This Clip From “Rudy” Over and Over and Fighting Tears

This far from being Notre Dame's Jerry Sandusky moment but it still has to hurt.  […]

SEC Doesn’t Care Who it Has to Hurt to Get Respect Again

mary_schapiro_1218.jpgAfter everything the SEC has been through, you might expect some government bureaucracies to wither and die at the hands of some irate congressional committee (ahem, Financial Services).
Not the Commission. No, the SEC has HAD IT with everybody’s Monday morning quarterbacking and is going to start kicking ass and taking names.
And they’re going to start by aggressively interpreting the clawback provisions in Sarbanes Oxley. Sounds incredibly snoozerific, we realize, but in the past the Commission has only gone after the bonuses of the actual scofflaws.
The new SEC has decided that it’s going to try and clawback the bonuses and performance-based pay back from those who knew squat about the fraud and just cashed checks.

Last week, the regulator asked a court to order the return of $4m (€2.82m, £2.43m) paid to Maynard Jenkins, former chief executive of CSK Auto, whose profits were allegedly inflated by accounting fraud committed by others: Mr Jenkins was not involved.

We especially feel bad for the guy being made to be an example at the hands of the SEC. The House of Schape/Cox has been the joke of the establishment for months so the Commission figures that if it has to make a few people miserable while they crawl their way back to semi-respectability, it’s a small price to pay.
‘Clawback’ marks tougher SEC stance [FT.com]

Berkshire CFO Attempts to Kill SEC Curiosity

When you’re a folksy billionaire octogenarian, you can afford to have others do your dirty work. In the case of the Warren Buffet, he has Charlie Munger hate on accountants for anything and everything under the sun.

Similarly, when the SEC comes calling, the Sage of Omaha can ring up Berkshire CFO Marc Hamburg. On the one hand, you might expect WB to shoot the breeze with the SEC employees since they likely share a fondness for a certain film genre.


However, when the conversation turns to business, the old man probably claims that he has an interview on tax cuts, a bridge match with WHGIII or a lunch date with Z-Knowles. This allows him to turn the SEC scamps over to Hamburg who plays a little bit of a bad cop to the Buffet’s chatty, dirty Grandpa. The CFO then lets the SEC know, in no uncertain terms, that they’re barking up the wrong tree:

In an April letter, the SEC asked Berkshire why it was not recording write-downs on shares with $1.86 billion in unrealized losses, all of which had been in that position for at least a year.

Given the duration of those losses, the SEC said they appeared to be more than temporary and as such should have been written down.

In a detailed response, Berkshire Chief Financial Officer Marc Hamburg said most of the losses with more than 12 months’ duration as of December 31 were concentrated in Kraft and U.S. Bancorp, shares it had acquired in 2006 and 2007.

Hamburg said that as of December 31, Berkshire determined both companies had enough earnings potential that their share prices would eventually exceed the original cost of the stock. It also has the “ability and intent” to hold the shares until they recovered, he said.

“We believe it is reasonably possible that the market prices of Kraft Foods and U.S. Bancorp will recover to our cost within the next one to two years assuming that there are no material adverse events affecting these companies or the industries in which they operate,” Hamburg said.

And if this doesn’t work, they’ll just schedule Munger for another speech.

SEC questioned Warren Buffett’s Berkshire on loss accounting [Reuters]