James Kidney, 66, a trial attorney from the Securities and Exchange Commission since 1986 offered a honest speech at his March 27 retirement party before a crowd of 70. According to a copy of his remarks obtained by Bloomberg, Kidney said his bosses were too “tentative and fearful” to go after ” the comfortable and powerful” Wall Street leaders. Kidney had campaigned internally to bring charges against more executives in the agency’s 2010 case against Goldman Sachs.
He called the SEC “an agency that polices the broken windows on the street level and rarely goes to the penthouse floors… On the rare occasions when enforcement does go to the penthouse, good manners are paramount. Tough enforcement, risky enforcement, is subject to extensive negotiation and weakening.”
Kidney said what many of us have long suspected, that his superiors were more focused on getting high-paying jobs after their government service than on bringing difficult cases. The agency’s penalties, Kidney said, have become “at most a tollbooth on the bankster turnpike.” SEC spokesman John Nester declined to comment.
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