Throughout the week over at Securities Docket, I highlight the most interesting columns and blog posts from around the web on the subjects of SEC enforcement and securities litigation. Here is a digest of my picks for the week ending March 5:

Madoff Losses Down from $65 Billion to $20 Billion (Doug Cornelius, Compliance Building)Compliance Building | March 3, 2010How do you value fraud? When the Madoff ponzi scheme collapsed the claim was that there was $65 billion in losses. That was the total dollar value on the account statements given to investors. Of course, that number was fictional because there were not real assets behind those numbers.

A Wall Street Witch Hunt (William D. Cohan, NYT Opinionator Blog)The New York Times | March 5, 2010As scary as the events of September 2008 must have been for Lloyd Blankfein and Goldman Sachs, they don't hold a candle to the abject fear that raced through the firm some 21 years earlier when, on the morning of Feb. 12, 1987, a United States marshal, Thomas Doonan, entered the Goldman building at 85 Broad Street in search of a senior partner, Robert Freeman. When Freeman walked in, Doonan closed the door and pulled down the shades. Doonan, who at first mispronounced Freeman's name, told him he was under arrest for insider trading and a breach of federal securities laws.

Questions For Harry Markopolos - Math Is Hard (Deborah Solomon, NY Times)The New York Times | March 5, 2010The NYT's Deborah Solomon interviews Madoff whistle blower Harry Markopolos, who starts by saying the SEC "wasn't even asleep at the switch; they were comatose. They didn't respond to heat and light, much less evidence of wrongdoing. They were not engaged in the fight."

Second Acts (Dimitra Kessenides, American Lawyer)American Lawyer | March 5, 2010As Robert Khuzami reaches his one-year anniversary on the job, Congress, investors, and the industry his agency regulates are waiting to see whether structural changes and a beefed-up docket-enforcement actions are up under Khuzami--will lead to real change. Will there be more significant cases like the Galleon investigation, conducted in tandem with the U.S. Department of Justice? Or will there will be more embarrassments, such as the rebuke from Jed Rakoff, the Manhattan district court judge who scuttled the agency's initial settlement with Bank of America Corporation?

Let the S.E.C. Help Itself (Joel Seligman, NY Times)The New York Times | March 2, 2010What is the most effective way to prevent another financial scandal on the scale of Allen Stanford's alleged securities fraud or Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme? No other single reform would accomplish more than allowing the Securities and Exchange Commission - the federal agency responsible for full disclosure of corporate information and the regulation of stock exchanges, broker-dealers and investment advisers - to fund itself through corporate fees.