{"id":9731,"date":"2011-06-09T09:21:56","date_gmt":"2011-06-09T13:21:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=9731"},"modified":"2011-06-09T09:21:56","modified_gmt":"2011-06-09T13:21:56","slug":"whistleblowers-must-take-a-number-and-wait-to-be-served","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/06\/09\/whistleblowers-must-take-a-number-and-wait-to-be-served\/","title":{"rendered":"Whistleblowers must take a number and wait to be served"},"content":{"rendered":"

Edward Siedle<\/a>, foolish man, takes the Securities and Exchange Commission at their word:<\/p>\n

\n

Last Friday afternoon I got it into my head that I should try to contact the head of the SEC\u2019s new whistleblower office and discuss a money manager scam I\u2019d uncovered. Surely, I figured, in this post-Madoff era the SEC must be rolling out the red carpet for those looking to clue it in on financial shenanigans.<\/p>\n

On the SEC\u2019s home page, at www. sec.gov I found a new button that says \u201cQuestions, Tips and Complaints Whistleblower Provisions.\u201d The bureaucrats behind this nifty new feature were so prescient that they even included a picture of a whistle for the convenience of illiterate snitches.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But he’s in a hurry, and doesn’t want to just fax or email the information — he wants to talk to a human being. That’s where it gets amusing\/alarming depending on your view of government:<\/p>\n

\n

I got the number of the SEC\u2019s media office from the folks at Forbes and called it. I asked the person who answered for the number of the SEC\u2019s new office of the whistleblower.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no new office of the whistleblower,\u201d I was told.<\/p>\n

\u201cCan l please have the number of the head of the office then,\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no new head of the office and there is no office,\u201d the woman told me in a tone that she appeared to have honed while humoring morons.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow wait a minute,\u201d I said, \u201cI read an article about the new guy who is running it. He\u2019s a former tobacco lawyer or something. I know his name \u2026 it\u2019s McKessy or something like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

My handler laughed and said, \u201cSo you believe everything you read?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

H\/T to Tim Harford<\/a>, who linked to this article saying “Adapt<\/em> emphasises whistleblowing as a way of uncovering hidden problems in fragile systems. Therefore: HEADDESK”.<\/p>\n

Adapt<\/em>, of course, is Harford’s latest book, which I quite enjoyed reading and recommend to your attention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Edward Siedle, foolish man, takes the Securities and Exchange Commission at their word: Last Friday afternoon I got it into my head that I should try to contact the head of the SEC\u2019s new whistleblower office and discuss a money manager scam I\u2019d uncovered. Surely, I figured, in this post-Madoff era the SEC must be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,25,9,13],"tags":[363,156,571,661],"class_list":["post-9731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-economics","category-law","category-usa","tag-corruption","tag-fail","tag-investment","tag-regulation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-2wX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9731"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9732,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9731\/revisions\/9732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}