Obama picks Schapiro to head SEC
President-elect Obama is nominating Mary Schapiro to head the Securities and Exchange Commission. Alisa Roth has more about Schapiro, who could be the first woman to hold the SEC chair position permanently.
Mary Schapiro (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
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Steve Chiotakis: Today, Obama is expected to tap Mary Shapiro to head up the Securities and Exchange Commission. If her name sounds familiar, that's because she's served as commissioner there before and headed up the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as well. More on her resume this morning from Alisa Roth.
Alisa Roth: Mary Schapiro will be the first woman to hold the SEC chair position permanently. She was named acting chair under President Clinton. Clinton also named her head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
John Coffee studies securities regulation and corporate governance at Columbia. He says Schapiro's pedigree may hint at the new administration's plans for Wall Street.
John Coffee: One factor behind her selection may be a desire of the Obama administration to seek to push a merger of the SEC and the CFTC.
It's an idea that's been tossed around before. The CFTC is like the SEC for the commodities trading business. Schapiro was an SEC commissioner under President Reagan. She was then reappointed by the first President Bush.
Shapiro will have to be confirmed by the Senate. She may face some controversy even before her job really starts: she appointed a son of disgraced Wall Streeter Bernie Madoff to a national committee in 2001. Both Madoff sons say they were not involved with their father's Ponzi scheme.
In New York, I'm Alisa Roth for Marketplace.
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