SEC Staffers Watched Porn As The Economy Tanked, and Wall Street Pirates Stole Billions

The newest attack on the SEC by Republicans is that SEC Officials are too busy watching Porn to be entrusted with watching Wall Street. According to Republican Rep. Darrell Issa –

“This stunning report should make everyone question the wisdom of moving forward with plans to give regulators like the SEC even more widespread authority,” he said. “Inexplicably, rather than exercise its existing regulatory enforcement authority, SEC officials were preoccupied with other distractions.”

Of course this ignores the fact that what the SEC Staffers who were guilty of this were doing is against Federal Regulations (and caught by Government filters and reported to the Inspector General), and normally such behavior as misuse of a Government Computer is grounds for administrative punishment or termination. Which leaves us to the point of – who was in charge, and what did they do about it?

Some SEC Employees Watching The Wrong Things

And the second question being – since Congress and their staff is exempt from this regulation…

What would a survey of Congress’ computers turn up?

SEC staffers watched porn as economy crashed

As the country was sinking into its worst financial crisis in more than 70 years, Security and Exchange Commission employees and contractors cruised porn sites and viewed sexually explicit pictures using government computers, according to an agency report obtained by CNN.

“During the past five years, the SEC OIG (Office of Inspector General) substantiated that 33 SEC employees and or contractors violated Commission rules and policies, as well as the government-wide Standards of Ethical Conduct, by viewing pornographic, sexually explicit or sexually suggestive images using government computer resources and official time,” said a summary of the investigation by the inspector general’s office.

More than half of the workers made between $99,000 and $223,000. All the cases took place over the past five years.

This also begs an interesting question. Since many of the people making that level of salary would be Presidential Appointees – that means that most of the people at that level would have been Republican appointees.