From a column by the Manhattan Institute's Steven Malanga posted at RealClearMarkets.com:
Speaking on TV on Sunday about the Goldman case, former President Clinton said that lax enforcement at the SEC had contributed to the environment permitting such deals, and he added that if his SEC chair, Arthur Levitt, had remained in place, much of what occurred in financial markets would have been prevented. But Levitt himself, speaking to Bloomberg radio on Monday morning in New York, said he thought the SEC had overreached itself with the Abacus case and worried about the precedent of the commission intervening in deals among sophisticated investors who understood the risks in such contracts.
Mr. Malanga doesn't mention Mr. Levitt's reported role as a paid adviser to Goldman Sachs, or his recent invocation by Senator Schumer in connection with doubling the SEC's already more-than-doubled budget and freeing it from the constitutional inconvenience of having its budget appropriated by Congress. Bloomberg radio also reports that Mr. Levitt (who, again, is identified as "former SEC head" rather than "paid Goldman Sachs adviser") predicted "some sort of settlement" in the SEC's case against Goldman. Add to the mix that Mr. Levitt is a director of Bloomberg LP, the news outlet reporting on his predictions.
