Critics call Cox ``anti-investor'' because he co-authored legislation to limit so-called ``strike suits.'' These are filed in response to steep declines in the prices of particular securities. They often are filed at the instigation of plaintiffs' lawyers, before any investigation of what caused the price drop, in order to initiate a discovery process in which plaintiffs' attorneys have a roving commission to try to link the stocks' decline to executive malfeasance.
The attorneys' complaints are often so strident that any prudent executive will feel pressure to come to a settlement, regardless of a suit's merits. Usually the plaintiffs, who are shareholders, are compensated less handsomely than the lawyers, whose compensation, extracted from the corporation, comes at the expense of ... shareholders.
The bill Cox helped to write, which discourages frivolous and extortionate suits by requiring the losing side to pay the winning side's legal expenses, was enacted over President Clinton's veto. One hundred and nine Democratic senators and representatives supported the override.
The Times, in the fourth paragraph of its story on the Cox nomination, and the Post, in the third paragraph of its, cited campaign contributions Cox has received from law, accounting and securities firms and other businesses. The implied message of such reporting about legislators is that their convictions conform to their contributions. However, studies of voting patterns strongly suggest a negligible effect of contributions on legislative votes. Rather, votes are primarily determined by legislators' ideologies, party affiliations and constituent preferences.
After listing contributions to Cox, the Times report quoted New York Sen. Charles Schumer as hoping Cox ``sees the need for balance.'' The Times did not then detail contributions to Schumer, such as the $12.4 million from financial interests over his career (according to the Center for Responsive Politics).
The Post story on the Cox nomination noted that the retiring SEC chairman, William Donaldson, 74, a wealthy investment banker, is ``immune to pressure to earn a living after he left government.'' The obvious innuendo is that Cox, who is 52 and does not have the wealth on Donaldson's scale, lacks the supposed disinterestedness of the very rich.
That the rich, because they are supposedly above material temptations, are especially suited to public service has long been used to justify aristocracies. It is not, however, usually embraced by liberals gloomily convinced that if someone ``pro-business'' chairs the SEC, corruption will be rampant in America's business system -- the system that produced Donaldson's supposedly ennobling wealth.