Meet the New Boss
By Very good piece by Charlie Cray on Chris Cox, newly appointed chairman of the SEC. Short version: putting Chris Cox in charge of the SEC is like putting a fox with a deep fat fryer in charge of the henhouse. Or like having Larry Bird referee a Lakers-Celtics game. Or both. Probably both.
This AlterNet piece also makes a strong case against Cox’s fitness for the job. Bush’s nomination of Cox is very like his nomination of Henry Kissinger to head up the 9/11 Commission, a clear sign that the president disapproves of the whole enterprise, and that whoever’s in charge should make sure that Bush and his friends are inconvenienced as little as possible. The unfortunate difference here is that the furor over corporate abuse has died down enough that Bush can put an obvious crony in charge without many people noticing or caring.
It’s been over three years since Enron collapsed and, unsurprisingly, the most concrete thing the president has done in regards to “corporate responsibility” is to have a backdrop for his speeches produced with the words “corporate responsibility” printed on it.
Related, lately I’ve been reading Boob Jubilee, a collection of essays on the cultural politics of the new economy from the always excellent Baffler. Many of you are probably familiar with Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas?, which has been discussed on this blog several times. Frank is the Baffler’s editor, and contributes a number of essays to Boob Jubilee, most of which was written in the mid-to-late 90’s. Now that large numbers of the day-traders, brokers, and dot-commers who were supposed to be the Gods of the New Economic Order are getting by giving hand jobs in the subway, it’s amazing to see how prescient Frank and his crew were. A few of the essays even have humorous “told ya so!” afterwords added for the collection’s publication.
With Chris Cox running the SEC, I’m sure these essays will continue to be quite relevant.