The SEC Let Steven Cohen Off Easy

April 5 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Securities and ExchangeCommission gets a lot of well-deserved brickbats for settlingcases with crooks and cheats without making them admit tobreaking the law. The deals often show the agency to be gutlessand weak. Other times they look plain stupid.

Here is one of those times when it’s all of the above. Thisweek, a federal judge in New York approved a $14 millionsettlement between the SEC and a unit of Steven A. Cohen’s hedgefund, SAC Capital Advisors LP, over insider-trading allegations.Cohen’s firm neither admitted nor denied the SEC’s claims, whichwas a ludicrous formality. The former SAC Capital analyst at theheart of the case, Jon Horvath, already had been convictedcriminally. The violations he committed were central to theSEC’s allegations against the $15 billion hedge fund.