[ by Larry Goldfarb ]

This morning’s article in the Wall Street Journal entitled, “Exchanges Get Closer Inspection”  featured a picture of Mary Schapiro in the most unflattering light.   She looks perturbed if not angry.  It is not intuitively obvious that Ms. Schapiro should be unduly upset based on the subject of the piece. 

The article notes that exchanges are being scrutinized by the SEC for unfairly providing information to selected firms or designing products that benefit specific firms.  The SEC will be examining exchanges more closely.  The piece is not particularly unflattering to the SEC or Ms. Schapiro.

There are at least two possible causes for the picture. 

• It could be a bad picture that has found its way into the library of the Wall Street Journal, though no one I asked had seemed to have seen it before in print
• The Journal’s editorial page sympathizes with the Republican contingent at the Agency.  They are potentially perturbed at the movement to implement rules to curtail money market funds.  This comes after the Financial Oversight Council moved to implement some of Ms. Schapiro’s reforms without considering the objections of the dissenting members of the SEC.

In any event, I’m quite sure that this picture is not on her Facebook page or was not submitted as part of her high school reunion memorabilia.  Let’s hope it was just an honest mistake.

Read the article, [WSJ, 11/20/2012].