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Investment News: CCOs on tightrope
In the wake of massive scandals involving the abuse of trading policies of several mutual fund companies in the past year, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission recently required all mutual funds and registered investment advisors to be monitored by a chief compliance officer. The CCO can be hired by the company full-time or be outsourced. “The introduction of this chief compliance officer is tremendously important,” says Tamar Frankel, a LAW professor of law instruction, who specializes in mutual funds, in Investment News on October 4. “The SEC cannot supervise, and that means there must be much stronger internal supervision. . . . The new chief compliance officers are going to have to tread a delicate line. If they are too strict, nobody will say anything to them, and they won’t find out anything. If they are too lenient, everybody will talk to them, but they will be ineffective.”
Boston Globe: Economics of vaccine shortages
The loss of nearly half of America’s flu immunizations earlier this month has given health authorities a public platform to address what they call a crisis in our nation’s vaccine production system. The recent flu shot shortage was caused by contamination at a British factory, but in general supply interruptions are frequent because vaccines are not easy to develop and produce, are less profitable than other pharmaceuticals, and are difficult to demonstrate as safe, reports the October 10 Boston Globe. “Society’s interests and the corporate interest don’t always line up in this game,” says Colin Marchant, a MED adjunct associate professor of pediatrics, who studies vaccine safety issues. “And certainly the public health objective of getting the vaccine at a nice, manageable price makes that difficult.”
Philadelphia Daily News: Everybody’s doing it
Have Americans grown so cynical that politicians widely believed to have lied during a campaign have little reason to fear consequences at the polls? That’s the direction we’re headed, Julian Zelizer, a College of Arts and Sciences professor of history, tells the Philadelphia Daily News on October 8. “Trust in government has been plummeting since Vietnam,” he says. “We’re distrustful and cynical about our leaders. Part of the ironic consequence of the Watergate revelation is that eventually you become numb to it, whether it’s small lies or big lies.”
15
October 2004
Boston University
Office of University Relations