On the one hand, it seems like an evergreen story, like "Diplomats Consider the Growing Power of China," or "Nation Skeptical of Overseas Entanglements":

Staff lawyers in the S.E.C. enforcement division say high turnover, tight budgets and a new, looser attitude toward corporate wrongdoing are sapping morale. The staffing and budget of the S.E.C. have lagged far behind the explosive growth of the markets the commission must police.

Which was how the Washington Star was putting it in 1939, according to our time machine.   On the other hand, the enforcement budget is down, and so's employment, if not by much, so maybe something really is going on.

But if the SEC, like any enforcement agency, deters wrongdoing partly by scaring people with its imposing computer-aided maps and transaction-tracking programs, then maybe stories like these don't do the agency much good. 

For while in the States, the SEC might get an "underfunded, overwhelmed" rap, that's not the view of everyone.  See, e.g., opinionated British righties.  In concluding that the current financial crisis represented the cratering of off-balance sheet bank assets, the New Statesman thought that maybe the SEC would have to bail out the Fed: "No wonder that the fearsome American regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission, is checking for illegality."

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