The WSJ reports:
U.S. senators, already facing distress calls from constituents over the Equifax Inc. hack, criticized the Securities and Exchange Commission’s new leader for how the agency handled a 2016 breach of its cornerstone system for storing market-moving information.
“I was disturbed to learn that the SEC suffered a cyberbreach of its Edgar system in 2016, but did not notify the public, or even all of its commissioners, until it was discovered during your recent review,” Sen. Mike Crapo (R., Idaho), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said at a hearing Tuesday.
Which prompts two thoughts:
- A former SEC Commissioner once told me that there is a long history of SEC chairmen treating their fellow commissioners like mushrooms: "they keep us in the dark and cover us in shit." It seems Mary Jo White continued that long tradition and that Clayton may well be doing so too.
- You know the passage in the Bible about not trying to take a splinter out of your brother's eye when there's a great whacking beam in your own? Before it gets all self-righteous about corporations that allegedly have inadequate controls, maybe the SEC ought to ponder that passage. After all, there is another longstanding tradition at the SEC: having crappy internal controls.
