Two of the five seats on the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the main Wall Street regulator, are about to be filled. The process is a partisan one, with Barack Obama, a Democrat, picking one new commissioner and the Republican leadership of the Senate the other. That, naturally, is a recipe for discord at an already bruised agency. Its clout has diminished thanks to its poor oversight of investment banks before the financial crisis, to say nothing of its failure to spot the Ponzi scheme of one Bernard Madoff. Now new research suggests that the sec is doing less well at its main job-policing firms that list shares or issue bonds, among other investments-than its own data suggest.
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