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Random Thoughts
The SEC - Hypnos, Not Argus
and in need of Tchai
by
Gaurang Bhatt, MD
The Securities and Exchange Commission was created as a watchdog after
stock manipulations that led to market crashes and loss of public money.
The US government including the elected legislature, executive branch
and the appointed judiciary have all been partisans of capital, so SEC
chairmen are often from the industry and are meant to cover up the
improprieties with occasional punishment of minor culprits, while the
big shots go free. Their collusion is similar to that of the Afghan or
Mexican police and drug lords. This is why Security dealers, investment
banks and brokerage houses pay big fines but no one is punished even by
a man like Eliot Spitzer. Prior SEC chairmen have had less than clean
records and if some reformed sinner tries to genuine policing, he is
forced to resign.
Thus the SEC was meant to be like the giant of Greek mythology, Argus
Panopticus. He had a hundred eyes and was put by Hera, the goddess wife
of Zeus to guard Io, a nymph whom Zeus had seduced in one of his myriad
extramarital affairs. Hera changed Io into a heifer, but she was worried
as Zeus had changed himself into a bull to rape Europa, after whom the
continent of Europe is named. So Hera put Argus to guard Io to prevent
access to her by Zeus. Zeus was obsessed with Io and charged Hermes, the
messenger of the gods to free her. The staff of Hermes with its winding
serpents is the symbol of physicians in the modern West. Hermes also
played the flute wonderfully and did so to put Argus to sleep, thus
closing all his hundred eyes, and killed him. Thus the SEC behaves more
like Hypnos, the god of sleep and needs a prod to keep it awake.
Incidentally, Argus was rewarded by Hera even in death, with partial
immortality. She transplanted his eyes into the feathers of a male
peacock where you can still the many eyes.
These are what Kipling called “just so” stories common to Indian
mythology, as in why the moon waxes and wanes due to partial redemption
from his curse of death for preferring Rohini of his 28 wives. The story
of Argus has a real life parallel in the botched war strategy of former
Defense Secretaries McNamara and Wolfowitz and a former Citibank CEO.
They had botched Vietnam, Iraq and International loans of Citibank, but
were rewarded for their disastrous performance by being made the chiefs
of the World Bank.
It was considered unforgivable by any Buddhist monk to lose “Dhyan” from
which the Japanese word Zen is derived via Chinese. The apocryphal story
goes that a high Chinese monk fell asleep during meditation. He was so
mortified by this lapse that he cut off his eyelids and threw them away,
so that his eyes would never close. The myth goes that where the eyelids
fell, from that ground grew a plant that the Chinese call TCHAI (Chai in
India) and thus the tea plant prevents sleep. That is what the SEC
needs.
Everyone now knows about the backdated options, Enron, Tyco, Worldcom,
Healthsouth etc. These are old. Let me describe something that happened
today, Friday, November 17, 2006. At around three in the afternoon, the
stock of Mentor Corporation had a sudden spike in volume and price with
a ballistic rise in both. No news was publicly available. The stock has
been rising for three days. After the market closed today, the FDA gave
approval for Silicone breast implants which the company makes. Did some
people know this before the public announcement and will the SEC
investigate? Don’t hold your breath, but we will see.
This story has a further and prior problem. Over a decade ago Dow
Corning went bankrupt because lawyers working on contingency fees and
expert physicians untruthfully testified in court that the silicone
breast implants cause everything in the past, present and future to the
living, dead and yet to be born ( forgive the hyperbole). The
prestigious New England Journal of Medicine wrote articles or editorials
afterwards casting doubts on all this (interested readers should read
Marcia Angell’s book on drug companies, FDA etc.). The FDA banned the
implants and has now permitted them despite protests from Ralph Nader’s
group.
Whom does one trust? Maybe that is why another Greek myth talks of
Diogenes, who searched the entire Greek world with a lantern looking for
an honest man and failed. The fervor of Gautami’s search for a mustard
seed from a household where no one had died, to make alive again her
dead child, was equally intense though personal, and also failed. Plato
therefore stated “Who shall guard the guardians”? In Hindi we say, ”Jub
zameen fasal khaaye to shikaayat kis se kare?
November 19,
2006
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Random Thoughts
The Week of November 19, 2006
After Nuclear Deal Will India Enter A New Phase?
by Rajinder Puri
Abject surrender? A tale of Subversive
Anti-nationalism by V. Sundaram
Blooming Bothaism by J. Ajithkumar
The SEC-Hypnos, Not Argus
and in need of Tchai by Gaurang Bhatt, MD
A National Program for Organized Looting by
V. Sundaram
Does Advanced Knowledge give Power to Solve
Human Problems? by TA Ramesh
Is Life an Illusion? by Arya Bhushan
Money Making Education in the Offing by Kusum
Choppra
Delhi's Two Children, Two Freedoms by Col.
Rahul K. Bhonsle
Remembering a Brave Lost Generation by V.
Sundaram
How to Make your Will? by Rajesh Talwar
Adonis: The Avatar of Avant-Garde Arabic
Poetry by PGR Nair
A River Walks Through It by Attreyee Roy
Chowdhury
Sita: Dheere Chal, Ham Haaree E Raghubar by
Satya Chaitanya
Landslide Spells Doom for the Land of Seven
Sisters by VK Joshi
If Only ... by Julia Dutta
The Daydreamer by Dibyendu Ghosal
Nasty Note by Ashwini Ahuja
A Long Way from Freedom by Hasan Mansoor
Keeping the Faith with Children by Barbara
Lewis
Gizmos for the Other India by Chitra
Balasubramaniam
Mommy Blogs: Cyber Support by Neelima P
Theater Therapy by Fehmida Zakeer
Drowning in the Oil Spill by Ma Diosa Labiste
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