Twitter De Twitter Dumb Dumb

The fact that Barney Frank wants to give the Securities and Exchange Commission oversight of the hedge fund industry should destroy any lingering disbelief about who's business his interests are in.

The chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee said Congress will give the Securities and Exchange Commission the authority it needs to require hedge funds to register with the agency.

"We will give them (SEC) explicitly that authority" to register hedge funds, Democratic Representative Barney Frank told the Reuters Global Financial Regulation Summit in Washington on Tuesday.

In 2006, a federal court rejected the SEC's efforts to oversee the loosely regulated $1.3 trillion hedge fund industry.

With all the tools of congress at his disposal Barney quickly settles on giving the job to the agency with a proven track record for turning away from evidence gift wrapped and dropped in their lap.

The move is part of the effort by Mary Schapiro, the SEC's new chairman, to revitalise the regulator following intense criticisms of its operations in recent cases culminating in the Madoff scandal.

Good job for the bad guys, Barney.

The SEC was spawned in the first great depression to restore confidence in the confidence scheme of Wall Street. The first SEC commissioner was non other that bootlegger and stock market manipulator Joe Kennedy. On black Tuesday Ole Joe holed up in the Waldorf Astoria with his private ticker tape and shorted the market on insider information.

In 1919, he joined the prominent stock brokerage firm of Hayden, Stone & Co. where he became an expert in dealing in the unregulated stock market of the day, engaging in tactics that would later be labeled insider trading and market manipulation. In 1923 he left, and set up his own investment company, becoming a multi-millionaire during the bull market of the 1920s

In this postmodern era the agency prepares for the flood of new tips not to follow up on, as well as buff up it's badly bruised image by getting itself Tweetered up.

After being criticized for a lack of transparency and failing to engage with informants, not least in the $65bn (£44.3bn) Bernard Madoff fraud case, America’s leading financial regulator has found a way to speak to the American people – through Twitter.

The three feeds focus on investor education, general news, and job opportunities, and to date are being followed by more than 2,100 Tweeters in total.

Ok so, Twitter de Twitter dumb, but riddle me batman this, how does "Barney Fife" 5-O- the bad guys like Madoff with jobs and general education feeds. What the hell is all the fuss about? Certainly not action, just the appearance of it.

..., the agency’s main Twitter feed – SEC_Investor_Ed – is little more than a rolling feed from its own newssite which details the enforcement actions it is taking, and does not interact appear to interact with followers in the way Twitter feeds are supposed to.

Barney Frank or any congressman serious about stopping criminality in the financial markets would do their level best to sh!t can the SEC yesterday instead of expanding the cover up groups coverage to the unregulated hedge fund industry. Remember the SEC already having the bad goods on and all over Madoff did exactly what is was supposed to do for the well connected insiders, which of course was to look away, and all the Twittering in the world won't change that.

The new SEC head Mary Schapiro, knows perfectly well that it will take a lot more than Tweeter feeds and feel good news releases to protect investors from the sharks on a Wall Street feeding frenzy. Instead of adding staff and picking up the pace and intensity of investigations, the SEC covers butt and Twitters in the wind.