SEC, Mary Jo White, Assailed By Liberals

ProPublica’s Jesse Eisinger, writing in the New York Times, finds growing disenchantment among liberals with Mary Jo White’s SEC. Among the milder critics was James R. Doty, the chairman of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. “The profession feels that I am a proactive regulator,” he told Eisinger. Other more pointed critics include not only an AFL-CIO policy director and a number of Congressional Democrats, including Senator Carl Levin, but a Democratic-appointed Commission member, Kara M. Stein. The director of investor protection at the Consumer Federation of America suggests that White’s lack of “a strong policy background” makes here dependent on her staff, and that’s the problem. “Is there anyone on the staff in a high position in leadership,” she asks, “a single person to point to who has reform credentials, who isn’t someone from the industry?”