SEC Muni Failure and Martha Haines
July 2011
Earlier this year, in February of 2011, I had enough of the SEC's Muni point person, Martha Haines. Martha Haines is a career of Muni failure. If you would like to read more please see www.MuniMarket.com and go to About Us.
Just a few months later, in early June of 2011, Martha Haines announced her retirement. One headline said she was "calling it quits." This is very interesting timing.
In parting, Martha Haines is taking credit for the MSRB's EMMA project. She even says she worked on it for nearly a decade. I want to make clear to Martha Haines, and everyone, there is no success to claim here.
There are two main parts to EMMA; the Muni price transparency part was something I pushed ten years earlier. So Martha Haines cannot be speaking of Muni trade and price transparency.
The other part of EMMA is Muni disclosure; Official Statements (OS's), continuing disclosure and material event notices. It is amazing that Martha Haines is publicly admitting taking ten years to do anything with Muni disclosure. Muni Official Statements were being collected (electronically) by the MSRB... they had a huge library. It was sitting there. I would have posted Muni OS's and could have done it in a week... if only I had the funding to subscribe for and receive the MSRB's OS library... which was about $10,000 for each year's database. There were people out there trying to get me the funding. Same thing for material event notices. Continuing disclosure... which is basically annual statements... could have been had from one of the NRMSIRs who would have been happy to sell the data even cheaper than the MSRB.
A Muni database just like EMMA could have happened more than a decade ago. It could have made a difference. But no, Martha Haines knew better... Martha Haines was in charge.
Ten years for something I could have done in a couple weeks.