President Obama today denied that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) discussed with the White House their fraud case against Goldman Sachs ahead of time and that his administration found out with everyone else.
“Categorically, we found out about it on CNBC,” Obama said to CNBC’s John Harwood today in an interview, “The SEC is an entirely independent agency that we have no day-to-day control over. And they have never discussed with us anything with respect to the charge that would be brought. So this notion that somehow there would be any attempt to interfere with an independent agency is completely false.”
Where I come from, we have a word for this: We call it bullshit!
Meanwhile, the Washington Post points out that there's no there there.
The worst that can be said on the basis of the available evidence is that Goldman knew ACA was being stupid and failed to point this out. That falls far short of the offenses that the SEC alleges, which might be why two of the SEC's five commissioners refused to vote for the action against Goldman -- a rare split in an enforcement case. And yet, rather than treat the SEC's adventure with due caution, politicians and regulators are jumping on the bandwagon. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who just happens to be fighting an election campaign, has pushed British regulators to pile on to the SEC case. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who could use some market scapegoats to distract from the euro zone's debt crisis, is threatening to follow suit. Congressional investigators are planning to grill Goldman officials for the umpteenth time.
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