The SEC is routinely criticized for not doing this, not doing that, not doing enough, and so on. Perhaps the agency could get more done if the people there would stop spending so much time investigating each other?

Last month, I wrote here about a potential investigation by the SEC Inspector General into whether SEC employees are using private email accounts and cell phones to avoid having their communications reviewed in SEC Inspector General investigations. While this is an impressive bit of navel-gazing, this month brings yet another form of self-examination at the agency. Bloomberg reports that the same IG who is being asked to investigate whether SEC employees are trying to avoid his investigations is now himself being investigated by the SEC's General Counsel.

The matter being reviewed by the General Counsel's office relates to comments that the IG, H. David Kotz, made during a 75-minute videotaped interview about the SEC and the stock market to Phillip Cannella III. Cannella sells a “crash-proof retirement” plan online and through a paid radio program, and he posted the video of his interview with Kotz to his website. 

Kotz says he received permission to do the interview in advance from the SEC's internal ethics counsel. Still, he says, he will ask yet another set of investigators--the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency--to further investigate whether he did anything improper in the interview.

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