In Bed with Wall Street

An enlightening book, In Bed with Wall Street: The Conspiracy Crippling Our Global Economy, has been published by Palgrave Macmillan.

The thesis is that Wall Street, its regulators, and politicians conspire together for their own enrichment, effectively stealing their loot from investors who do not have protection from the predators. The costs of these regulatory failures are "virtually incalculable," says the author, Larry Doyle.

The 201-page book devotes seven pages to San Diego attorney Gary Aguirre. Doyle relates a story that has been told on this blog many times. After getting upbeat reviews from superiors, SEC employee Aguirre smelled possible passing of inside information by John Mack, a Wall Street bigwig, and Pequot, then a huge hedge fund. Aguirre wanted to interview Mack. But Aguirre was told, in effect, that Mack had too much clout and too many political connections. Aguirre was fired. But he went after the SEC.

Ultimately, Aguirre was exonerated by two congressional committees and won a $755,000 settlement in his wrongful-termination suit against the agency.

Pequot closed down and paid a $28 million settlement for using information that was illegally sourced. Who was the person who saved Mack from an interview? Why, it was Mary Jo White, who now heads the SEC.

Aguirre wrote to the author, "I saw how SEC management would create a fictional rationale for not pursuing the investigation against John Mack, which would be immediately replaced with a new one as the last one imploded. Somewhere between the third and fourth fictionalized account, I understood just how deeply the corruption was embedded in [SEC] Enforcement's management."