Fight Against Securities

That is the way I felt last week when the Securities and Exchange Commission announced that it had agreed toa measly $285 million settlement with Citigroup over. After years of lengthy , the mortgage securities at the heart of the financial crisis. And low-level bankers did not, and could not, act alone. Neither the Citigroup settlement nor any of the others come close to matching the profits and bonuses that these banks generated in making these deals. They were not rogues, hiding things from their bosses. The S.E.C. has also devoted adequate resources to the issue. Pause, and think about that. The boss was looking for credit, but as far as the S.E.C. was concerned, he got no blame. It cannot investigate and wring a prosecution or settlement out of every corrupt deal. This seems to be our fate: our bankers took reckless risks, but our regulators take none.