SIPC’s Brokerage Account ‘Insurance’ Scam: Take It from a Comptroller of the Currency
I’ve invited James Smith, former Comptroller of the Currency and former Deputy Under-Secretary of the U.S. Treasury to discuss the Insurance Scam being run by SIPC. As I’ve discussed in prior columns posted at www.kotlikoff.net, this scam puts all brokerage account holders at extreme risk. Indeed, I strongly recommend every brokerage account holder close her account immediately pending passage of H.R. 3482 and S. 1725. I also strongly recommend that all SIPC-insured brokerage firms immediately disclose the huge risk to their clients of SIPC “insurance,” specifically that if they withdraw and spend enough of their account balances, they can a) lose any claim to SIPC insurance coverage on their remaining balance and b) also be sued for every penny they legitimately withdrew over the six years proceeding the discovery of fraud in their brokerage account. To avoid its insurance obligation and sue legitimate brokerage account investors, SIPC need only declare the fraud a Ponzi Scheme, which is easily done and which, as the NY Times, recently reported, are a dime a dozen.
Take It From a Comptroller of the Currency:
Congress Needs to Act Now to Protect Investors from SIPC “Insurance”
by James E. Smith
On September 25, 2000, eight years before the scams of Bernard Madoff and R. Allen Stanford were uncovered, Gretchen Morgenson (financial journalist for the New York Times) wrote a perceptive column of exacting detail describing the Securities Investor Protection Corporation’s pinched and adversarial practices aimed at favoring the SIPC Fund over protecting innocent customers of failed broker dealers. That column was “dead on” concerning SIPC’s regrettable culture, in which litigation rather than protection is too often the order of the day.
