Christopher Cox

Christopher Cox
28th Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission
Incumbent
Assumed office  August 3, 2005
President	George W. Bush
Preceded by	William H. Donaldson
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California's 48th district
In office January 3, 1989 – August 2, 2005
Preceded by	Robert Badham
Succeeded by	John Campbell
Born	October 16, 1952 (1952-10-16) (age 55) Saint Paul, Minnesota
Political party	Republican
Spouse	Rebecca Gernhardt Cox
Alma mater	University of Southern California, Harvard University

Charles Christopher Cox (born October 16, 1952, in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA) has served as Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) since August 3, 2005. He had served as a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from January 25, 1989 to August 2, 2005, representing a district in southern California. He resigned from Congress to become chairman of the SEC.

Pre-congressional career

After graduating from Saint Thomas Academy in Mendota Heights, Minnesota in 1970, Cox earned his B.A. at the University of Southern California in 1973, following an accelerated three-year course.

In 1977 he earned both an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, where he was an Editor of the Harvard Law Review. During the second term of Ronald Reagan from 1986 to 1988, he served in the White House as Senior Associate Counsel to the President.

From 1977 to 1986, Cox was first an associate and then partner with the international law firm of Latham & Watkins. At the time of his retirement in 1986 he was the Partner in Charge of the Corporate Department in the Orange County office, and served as a member of the firm's national management.

In 1984, Cox co-founded Context Corporation, which produced daily English reproductions of the leading state-controlled newspaper in the Soviet Union, Pravda. The publication was used chiefly by U.S. universities and U.S. government agencies, and was eventually distributed to customers in 26 countries around the world. The company had no connection to the Soviet government.

In 1982–83, Cox took a leave of absence from Latham & Watkins to teach federal income tax at Harvard Business School.

Congressional career

1989, Congressional Pictorial Directory — Cox as a first term Congressman

Cox was elected to Congress in 1988 from what was then California's 40th District. He was reelected eight more times from this Orange County-based district, which was renumbered as the 47th District in 1993 and the 48th District in 2003.

For 10 of his 17 years in the Congress, from 1995 to 2005, Cox served in the House Majority Leadership as Chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee, the fifth-ranking elected leadership position (behind the Speaker, the Majority Leader, the Majority Whip, and the Chair of the House Republican Conference). He was Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, and also Chairman of the Select Committee on U.S. National Security that produced the Cox report, an indictment of Chinese espionage and of security failures at several U.S. national laboratories.

When Congress established the Bipartisan Study Group on Enhancing Multilateral Export Controls through federal legislation in 1999, Cox was tapped as co-chairman. The group published a unanimous report in 2001 recommending wholesale modernization of U.S. export controls.^[1] In 1994 he was appointed by President Clinton to the Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform, which in 1995 published a unanimous report warning that the nation cannot continue to allow entitlement programs to consume a rapidly increasing share of the federal budget.^[2] Cox also served as Chairman of the Select Committee on Homeland Security (the predecessor to the permanent House Committee); Chairman of the Task Force on Capital Markets; and Chairman of the Task Force on Budget Process Reform.

Among Cox's notable legislative successes is the Internet Tax Freedom Act, a 1998 law prohibiting federal, state, and local government taxation of Internet access and banning Internet-only levies such as email taxes, bit taxes, and bandwidth taxes. With U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) as his chief co-sponsor, Cox authored legislation in 1997 to privatize the National Helium Reserve, which was then $1.4 billion in debt to taxpayers. As of 2004, this was the third-largest privatization in U.S. history, surpassing the value of the 1988 Conrail privatization. Cox also wrote the only law that was enacted over President Bill Clinton's veto, the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, aimed at protecting investors from fraudulent and extortionate lawsuits.

In 1989, Polish President Lech Wałęsa joined Cox in a Washington ceremony marking the enactment of Cox's legislation establishing the Polish-American Enterprise Fund. Together with the Baltic-American Enterprise Fund, the Hungarian-American Enterprise Fund, and seven other enterprise funds in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the Cox legislation, incorporated in the Support Eastern European Democracy (SEED) Act, matched U.S. foreign aid with venture capital in the newly free countries of the former Warsaw Pact.

Personal information

In 1978, Cox was paralyzed from the waist down following a serious off-road Jeep accident in the rainforest on the Hawaiʻian island of Molokaʻi. He eventually regained the ability to walk, but wore a harness of steel bars and leather straps for six months. He still has two metal screws in his back, and according to a 2005 Fortune magazine profile, “has been in pain every day for the past 27 years.”^[3] Since he can't sit for extended periods of time, he has a special desk that allows him to work while standing.

Cox's sister, 11 months younger, died on Easter Sunday as the family was preparing to go to church. She had been standing behind the family station wagon as Cox's father backed the car out of the driveway. He didn't see her, and she was struck by the car and killed.^[3]

As a contestant on the NBC-TV show Password Plus!, Cox won $5,000.^[3] His two-day appearance in the 1980s was recently re-broadcast by the Game Show Network.

Cox is a cancer survivor. Shortly after becoming SEC Chairman, he was diagnosed with thymoma, a rare form of cancer, and underwent surgery in January 2006 to remove a tumor from his chest. He is now healthy. He returned to work "after several weeks recovering from surgery," according to The Associated Press.^[4]

Economic Crisis of 2008

See also: Economic crisis of 2008#Market crash of September 2008 and John McCain presidential campaign, 2008#U.S. financial crisis

Under his leadership, the SEC imposed restrictions on short selling in reaction to the liquidity crisis. Short selling of financial stocks was banned outright, and naked short selling was curtailed.

On September 18, 2008, Republican presidential candidate John McCain said he would, if elected, fire Cox for failing in his oversight of Wall Street.^[5]

In response, Cox wrote, "History will judge the quality of our response to this economic crisis, but now is not the time for those of us in the trenches to be distracted by the ebb and flow of the current election campaign.... The best response to political jabs like this is simply to put your head down and not lose a step doing the best job you can possibly do on behalf of those you serve."^[6]

A report by the SEC inspector general found that the SEC failed in its oversight of Bear Stearns. Cox said that the CSE program (which started in 2004) for large investment bank holding companies was "fundamentally flawed" because it was voluntary, and he shut it down.^[7].

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act did not give the SEC the authority to regulate large investment bank holding companies. The CSE program was proven to be ineffective and did not offer SEC oversight authority; and therefore, leaving investors vulnerable to regulatory gaps such as this one and of those found in a $60 trillion market of Credit Default Swaps or CDS.

Currently, the CDS market remains unregulated. "Neither the SEC nor any regulator has authority even to require minimum disclosure". ^[8].

See also

• George W. Bush Supreme Court candidates

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References

• Christopher Cox at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress

External links

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• Official Biography — SEC Website
• Christopher Cox Sworn in as SEC Chairman — SEC Press Release
• President Bush Nominates Congressman Cox as SEC Chairman — White House Press Release
• Speeches and Statements as SEC Chairman
• The changes I've seen — Farewell letter by Chris Cox in the Orange County Register
• [1] -- This American Life, Episode 362, Act Two: Now You SEC Me, Now You Don't

Congressional

• Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Voting record maintained by The Washington Post
• Campaign finance reports and data at the Federal Election Commission
• Campaign contributions at OpenSecrets.org
• Issue positions and quotes at On The Issues
• Staff salaries, trips and personal finance at LegiStorm.com

Chairmen of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission Kennedy • Landis • Douglas • Frank • Eicher • Purcell • Caffrey • Hanrahan • McDonald • D Cook • Demmler • Armstrong • Gadsby Cary • Cohen • Budge • Casey • B Cook • Garrett • Hills • Williams • Shad • Ruder • Breeden • Levitt • Pitt • Donaldson • Cox