The SEC first incorporated reliance on credit ratings into its rules and regulations in 1975 in connection with how broker-dealers must compute their net capital. In that rule, the SEC specified that a broker-dealer, in computing its net capital, could take a lesser deduction from its net worth as to securities that were rated as having a comparatively low chance of default according to a credit rating of a ¿nationally recognized statistical rating org.¿ (¿NRSRO¿). This report focuses on the implementation of and compliance with the Rating Agency Act and SEC rules. It also assessed the SEC¿s efforts to oversee the NRSROs and to implement the Rating Agency Act¿s accountability, competition, and transparency objectives.

In Securities Regulation Reassessed, Paul Mahoney shows that policy responses to financial crises are broadly similar across place and time: political actors, hoping to avoid blame for a financial crisis, create a narrative of market failure, arguing that misbehavior by securities market participants, rather than prior policy errors, is the primary cause of the crisis. Politically obliged regulators craft reforms that purport to solve problems which are either non-existent or only tangentially related to the crisis; yet they increase the complexity and expense of compliance, resulting in consolidation and concentration of market share in the hands of already leading financial firms. Securities Regulation Reassessed illustrates these points primarily but not exclusively with evidence from the New Deal-era securities reforms in the United States. Against the conventional wisdom that regards the New Deal reforms as successful, Mahoney provides substantial countervailing evidence, showing instead that Congress’s diagnoses were systematically inaccurate and its remedies reduced competition in the securities industry. Looking farther into history, the work treats several key episodes prior to the New Deal, including the English financial crises of 1697 and 1720 and the "blue sky” era of the 1910s and 1920s in the United States. Finally, Mahoney considers the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 from the same analytical perspective. Mahoney finds a predictable pattern for efforts at securities reform: they require huge effort to enact, and yield little objectively measurable payoff and some objectively measurable harm.

An insider’s look at the SEC and the changes needed to strengthen the U.S. financial system In 2008, Americans were reeling from the devastating financial crisis that caused the Great Recession. There were searing questions about how the crisis was allowed to happen and calls for immediate reform from Capital Hill, the news media, and the general public. Multiple scandals sent real fear through the investing community and brought unprecedented heat on the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). There was little doubt that the SEC had to fix rules that permitted bad behavior, shake off decades of complacency and enforce existing laws. Wall Street lawyer Norm Champ spent nearly 20 years dealing with the SEC on behalf of his clients and as an industry representative working to educate the agency about hedge funds. Believing he could help reform the deeply-flawed agency, Champ left his career in the private sector and joined the SEC. As Director of the Division of Investment Management, he became a key player in stabilizing trillions of dollars of investor capital while reenergizing the SEC’s culture and management. In Going Public, Champ presents a rare, insider’s look at how the SEC operates and explains exactly how the agency impacts the overall economic health of the country. He examines the inner workings of hedge funds, economic policy and politics, investing, and inefficient and frustrating federal agencies. Engrossing and important, this book offers critical recommendations for policy changes that will create healthy, free-functioning markets and help Americans better prepare for the inevitable next crisis.