HARDLY TOUGH ON SOFT MONEY

A Securities and Exchange Commission examination of soft dollar practices found a quarter of money managers and a third of brokers hadn’t properly disclosed how they directed their stock trading activity to firms that provided them with such squishy goodies as equities research, computers, cars, office space, junkets and, ahem, salary “subsidies.” The agency’s recommendation? New record-keeping standards.

Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., castigated the SEC for being too lenient on the industry. The recommendations “amount to stern and unenforceable lectures,” he griped.