Warren vs. White: The tone is unfair

Come on, senator, give the chairwoman a break. We're speaking, of course, of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Mary Jo White, chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. A couple of weeks ago, Ms. Warren sent a blistering 13-page letter to Ms. White, complaining about her lack of leadership, lack of direction for the agency and failure to follow through on her promises. “You have now been SEC chair for over two years, and to date, your leadership of the commission has been extremely disappointing,” Ms. Warren wrote. It's easy to pick on regulators. Either they're overstepping their bounds — making life practically impossible for someone running a business — or they're not doing enough to protect someone, falling down on the job or wasting money. To be sure, everyone is entitled to their opinion. For Ms. Warren, who, as Bloomberg News suggested, has become a scourge of Wall Street, dumping on the head of the country's top securities regulator probably makes good political sense as a means to raise her profile. It shows that she is fearless in looking out for the little guy, the investor, who has been left in the lurch by the regulator that's supposed to do just that. But Ms. Warren goes too far. While InvestmentNews has not always agreed with the positions Ms. White has taken, we acknowledge that she has a tough job. Her to-do list is chock-full (just think of Dodd-Frank alone). In addition, she has to wrestle with four commissioners who probably couldn't agree on what color the sky is. Taking her to task for the fact that the SEC managed to elicit admissions of guilt in only 19 of the 520 settlements struck between June 2013 and September 2014 is a cheap shot. Sure, the percentage is small, but that's 19 more admissions of guilt than the SEC ever managed before. A better way for Ms. Warren to handle her frustrations with Ms. White and her management of the SEC would have been to call a meeting, or sit down over lunch and have a conversation. But then, such a tête-à-tête wouldn't have gotten any headlines.