SEC Enforcement

The Wall Street Journal has an article on C1 on the "urgency" of SEC enforcement.  Listing three new settlements, BofA, GE and Greenberg, the author applauds the SEC chairman's efforts.  The headline has it backwards.  The settlements are too small, too late and come with no admission of guilt--they are pathetic.  The SEC has long spent way too much time and energy on fine tuning market mechanisms and passing new rules of behavior and far too little time enforcing the rules it has.  At time I have wondered whether we need two agencies, one for pure enforcement and a second for securities rule making.  The efforts of the first would not be compromised by the second and the good work of the first would not give a free ride to the silly efforts of the second.