Scandale Madoff: et ça continue...

Vous l'avez compris, je trouve ce scandale fascinant. Heureux de voir les "échos" français avec la contribution de Ivan. Voici quelques ajouts provenant du Wall Street Journal d'aujourd'hui.

D'abord, dans Madoff Misled SEC in 'o6, got off (ici), on note la dénonciation faite par un investisseur auprès de la SEC, lequel soupçonnait que Madoff menait une opération pyramidale:

On Jan. 4, 2006, the SEC's enforcement staff in New York opened an investigation, based on Mr. Markopolos's allegations, into whether Mr. Madoff was, in fact, running a Ponzi scheme. The SEC staff received documents from Mr. Madoff and Fairfield Greenwich, a hedge fund that placed money with Mr. Madoff on behalf of its clients. The SEC also interviewed Mr. Madoff, his assistant, an official from Fairfield Greenwich and another employee.

[...]

The staff recommended closing the investigation because Mr. Madoff agreed to register his investment-advisory business and Fairfield agreed to disclose information about Mr. Madoff to investors. The SEC report said the staff closed the case "because those violations were not so serious as to warrant an enforcement action."

Dans Madoff Exploited the Jew (ici), Ronald A. Cass identifie une cause du laxisme de la SEC (en plus d'un possible conflit d'intérêts noté hier):

Predictably, the Madoff story has prompted speculation about potential new regulations that might be imposed to head off future problems. Politicians and pundits have called for the adoption of new rules for securities markets in general and hedge funds in particular, even though Mr. Madoff didn't run a hedge fund and there is no shortage of existing securities rules that were violated by his reported conduct. (Keeping two sets of books suggests his own recognition of that.)

The SEC's failure to pursue complaints about Mr. Madoff over the past decade wasn't the result of inadequate regulations but of disbelief that someone so well entrenched in the industry -- a former Nasdaq chairman and SEC adviser -- was capable of committing such a callous crime.

Finalement, à la lumière de ces éléments, dans To Catch a Thief (ici), on souligne de manière caustique les limites de la réglementation pour "policer" les marchés:

Since 2000 and especially after the fall of Enron, the SEC's annual budget has ballooned to more than $900 million from $377 million. (See the nearby chart.) Its full-time examination and enforcement staff has increased by more than a third, or nearly 500 people. The percentage of full-time staff devoted to enforcement -- 33.5% -- appears to be a modern record, and it is certainly the SEC's highest tooth-to-tail ratio since the 1980s. The press corps and Congress both were making stars of enforcers like Eliot Spitzer, so the SEC's watchdogs had every incentive to ferret out fraud.

Yet they still failed to nail Bernard Madoff.

[...]

The fact is that the only people who seem to have taken concrete action to protect investors from Mr. Madoff are private research shops like Aksia LLC. Its analysts did the real work of figuring out that Mr. Madoff's claimed investment strategy couldn't be happening at the volumes he claimed to be trading. Likewise, it was the short sellers who first blew the whistle on Enron, while the SEC was clueless and the firm's auditors were asleep.

There's a lesson here for investors and Congress. Instead of shoveling more money and power to the regulators who already had plenty of both, let's take care not to overregulate the people who actually warned about Mr. Madoff's miracle returns. Law enforcement is useful in punishing wrongdoers after the fact, which will deter some crooks. But expecting the SEC to prevent a determined and crafty con man from separating investors from their money is no more sensible than putting your life savings with a Bernard Madoff.

Ce scandale soulève des questions sérieuses sur le rôle et les pouvoirs des régulateurs. Attention aux solutions simples et aux suspects de convenances...