Word: coxed
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John McCain didn't parse any words last week when he called for the firing of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman Christopher Cox. The Republican nominee's choice of words may have been more direct than others - and more misguided, since the president can't technically fire the SEC head - but McCain's sentiment was nothing new. For months, calls for the SEC to do something more in the financial markets has been heard all over, from Congress, a midtown Manhattan law firm, the Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, cable TV business news and former SEC commissioners...
...Cox has been painted as something of a regulator missing in action - he's still explaining why he wasn't on particular conference calls during the Bear Stearns meltdown in March. (He told the Wall Street Journal he missed one call because the time changed, and he was involved in other calls throughout the weekend.) When he appears alongside Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury secretary Hank Paulson at press events he can seem dwarfed in stature, the representative of an agency with its roots not in sweeping monetary policy but in humble consumer protection. Created by Congress...
...Washington over past two decades, there was little appetite for adding powers to an agency like the SEC: In 1998, when the Commodity Futures Trading Commission proposed regulating the burgeoning derivatives market, the banking lobby, with some help from hedge funds and investment banks, quickly thwarted the measure. And Cox's predecessor at the SEC, William Donaldson, encountered stiff opposition when he tried to push more pro-shareholder measures and subject hedge funds to more oversight. When a court struck down Donaldson's hedge fund registration rule, Cox announced that the SEC would not seek to appeal the ruling...
...Much has been made of the SEC's failure to spot trouble brewing at the investment banks that fell under its purview. An SEC rule change in 2004 - which didn't generate a lot of attention at the time and passed before Cox came along - let the five largest investment banks significantly raise the amount of money they could borrow. In retrospect, the new ratio - $40 dollars borrowed for each dollar of capital to back it up - was precariously high, considering smaller broker-dealers were capped at a ratio of $12 borrowed for each dollar of capital...
...Brother, Where Art Thou?,” it’s no wonder that “Burn After Reading” features an impressive cast, including George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Tilda Swinton, John Malkovich, and Frances McDormand, who is married to Joel. Malkovich plays Osbourne Cox, a CIA agent who, after being unceremoniously fired from his job, decides to write a memoir. Swinton plays his callous wife, Katie Cox, who is having an affair with Harry Pfarrer, a married, womanizing federal marshal played by George Clooney. A disc containing Osbourne’s memoir notes soon finds...