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 Mar. 18.

When Rich People Do Stupid Things

Motley Fool UK | Mar 18, 2011

But to quote Buffett again, who once ridiculed a different group of defunct financiers: "To make money they didn't have and didn't need, they risked what they did have and did need. And that's foolish. It is just plain foolish. If you risk something that is important to you for something that is unimportant to you, it just does not make any sense." When people like Gupta and Madoff, who were already rich beyond belief, steal from others (indirectly or literally), you have to ask: What is the motive?

Moral for CEOs Is Choose Your Fraud Carefully

Bloomberg News | Jonathan Weil | Mar 18, 2011

As long as the SEC clings to the position that there were no errors in those companies' financial statements, it can't allege there was anything wrong with the firms' audits. That helps shield the auditors from potentially crippling liability in private securities litigation. It also limits the SEC's ability to accuse any of the companies' executives of fudging their numbers. And so the SEC has to resort to convoluted claims like the one against Mozilo, where Countrywide's disclosures were false and misleading but somehow its balance sheet was pristine.

Why Wall Street Reform May Already Be Dead - CBS MoneyWatch.com

CBS Moneywatch | Jane Bryant Quinn | Mar 16, 2011

Could the SEC be managed better? Yes — any organization can. Can the SEC do “more with less,” as budget cutters love to say? No. Plenty of Americans had their personal budgets cut in this past recession. Ask them if they're doing “more with less.”

A failure of funding for the SEC - The Hill's Congress Blog

The Hill | Bartlett Naylor | Mar 15, 2011

Illogically and hypocritically, congressional Republicans are now using failure by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Wall Street police to detect and shut down the Madoff Ponzi scheme as their primary argument to gut funding for the SEC. Incompetent investigators shouldn't be funded, these critics contend.

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