Tijuana Escorts: SEC Pays Gary Aguirre Big Sum, but More Cleansing Needed
The Securities and Exchange Commission today (June 29) agreed to pay $775,000 to San Diego attorney Gary Aguirre. The sum represents four years and ten months of his salary since the agency fired him in 2005, plus his attorney fees. The story of the SEC’s blatant prostitution in the Aguirre case has been told on this blog and in my column several times before, but it is worth summarizing. In short, Aguirre’s ordeal is a story showing how the SEC, which was born in the 1930s to protect investors from Wall Street predators, became an agency that protected Wall Street predators from investors. Aguirre had good reason to believe that John Mack, head of Morgan Stanley, may have passed information to Pequot, then one of the most powerful hedge funds. But Aguirre’s supervisors told him that Mack had “juice” and “political clout.” Mack was a big fundraiser for George W. Bush. Prior to his pursuit of Mack and Pequot, Aguirre had been given a two-step pay raise for “consistently going the extra mile, and then some.” But after Aguirre wanted to interview Mack, Aguirre’s supervisors gave him a negative re-evaluation outside the SEC’s ordinary performance appraisal process.