“Contas equilibradas não significa superávite”

[Ulisses Pereira]

"SEC's a Sleepy Watchdog With Poor Vision"

By James J. Cramer
12/22/2003 08:25 AM EST


"No vigilance. No warnings. No sense of urgency. Just business as usual.

That's how the Securities and Exchange Commission reacted to the incredibly horrible performances of so many mutual fund families in the last few years. Instead of having any understanding of human nature, that these asset-gathering machines would do whatever is necessary to keep assets up even though performance was extremely disappointing, it just treated the mutual fund industry as if it were this rational "heads I win, tails I lose" beast.


Hardly.

As heroine Noreen Harrington, who alerted New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer to the travesties that were happening, shows, the hedge funds knew exactly who to pick on: companies that had performed so abysmally that their clients were leaving in droves.

It was so obvious to the hedge funds that these ne'er-do-wells would blow up their own clients for more money, yet it was totally opaque to the gumshoes who were supposed to protect us. You'd think their antennae would go up, that they would be able to sense that they needed to be extra-vigilant after these horrid returns, but they stayed in sleep mode.

Throughout the downturn, whether it be in the pricing of convertibles, the fudging of numbers or the skimming and scamming of mutual funds, managers throughout the country were too tempted to take advantage of their little clients in order to assure a steady stream of income for their management companies.

How the government thought this wouldn't happen amazes me. Maybe they really are naive in Washington, just totally naive to the way the real world works.

What a bunch of Bambis they all turned out to be. "

(in www.realmoney.com)