Levitt's legacy

Talk about market timing. During his record eight-year tenure (1993-2001) as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Arthur Levitt Jr. presided over the democratization of Wall Street, an unprecedented period in which millions of Americans who had no previous exposure to equities poured their money into stocks and subsequently lost much of it. As SEC chief, Levitt made a priority of educating the public about the powerful forces arrayed against them in the capital markets. Almost two years after leaving office, he's singing the same song.

InTake on the Street: What Wall Street and Corporate America Don't Want You to Know, Levitt offers a straightforward, no-nonsense handbook for retail investors fatigued by a two-year bear market and rampant corporate scandal. Of course the book is also Levitt's attempt to define his legacy. His disquisitions defending past policy decisions can grow tedious, but overall, the book is both a useful investing primer and an engaging memoir about power, politics and money.

A liberal Democrat from a political family, Levitt made protecting the interests of individual investors the governing principle of his tenure. He felt that impulse even during his career on Wall Street, he writes. His brokerage firm partners Sanford Weill (now head of Citigroup) and Hardwick Simmons (currently CEO of the Nasdaq Stock Market) scoffed when Levitt gave a speech titled "Profits and Professionalism" at Columbia University in 1972, in which he admonished Wall Street to end commission-based payment of brokers because it encouraged unsavory practices like account churning. But Levitt didn't care.

In clean, direct prose Levitt urges individuals to avoid brokers and to be wary of most mutual fund companies, given the myriad conflicts of interest these institutions face. Instead, he counsels mom and pop to stick to low-cost, no-load index funds. For individuals investing more than $50,000, he recommends hiring a certified independent financial adviser.

他支持这一建议具有丰富的信息（从SEC目睹的Shenanigans的大部分地中化）帮助读者保持金融服务提供者诚实，并做自己的作业。这是吃 - 你的布鲁塞尔 - 豆芽投资。

正如他回顾他的美国证券交易委员会任期，莱维特称“公平披露他的签名成就。两年前颁布了，瑞丰公司禁止公司向分析师或基金管理人员释放材料信息，而不向公众通知，其效果一直很远。Levitt还确定了他对新审计员独立规则的推动 - 虽然会计业的强大的大厅严重钝化 - 就像他最重要的举措一样。尽管批评者的投诉，他的一些改革意外后果有讽刺意味，但讽刺意味着，他的令人信服的案件是正确的案例是正确的案例是做正确的。

Not surprisingly, perhaps, Levitt is not shy about trumpeting his own political savvy. Reg FD passed despite strenuous industry opposition, he says, because he preempted Wall Street's lobbying by first persuading thenSenate Banking Committee chairman Phil Gramm to support the bill.

The accounting industry agreed to limited restrictions on auditors' consulting activities only after Levitt broke with previous SEC practice and allowed his enforcement director to privately brief the Senate Banking Committee -- many of whose members were thought to be in the industry's pocket -- on several audit-related cases under investigation.

But Levitt also isn't afraid to admit his mistakes. He concedes that advising the Financial Accounting Standards Board in 1994 to back down on requiring companies to record stock option compensation as an expense "was probably the single biggest mistake of my term in Washington."

He continues to stump for more investor-friendly reforms. Conflicts between research and investment banking can only be resolved if Wall Street firms separate their research and brokerage operations, he argues. Levitt further suggests that independent rating agencies should pass judgment on proposed equity offerings in the same way that Moody's Investors Service rates debt, with certain investors prohibited from buying low-grade paper. Sometimes a small investor is his own worst enemy.