Each week over at Securities Docket, I offer my picks for the week’s best columns and blog posts from around the web (on the subjects, predictably, of SEC enforcement and securities litigation). Here are my picks for this week:

A rip-off far worse than Madoff’s (Lawrence W. Schonbrun, LA Daily News)
LA Daily News | November 20, 2009
What would you think of a legal system in which someone burglarizes your house, yet you are the one who is sued and have to pay all the damage caused by the burglar? What would you think of a legal system that allowed the phone company to be sued every time someone received a harassing phone call? And what would you think of a legal system that functioned so that if you were in a car accident and had a legitimate claim for $5,000 for damage to your automobile, the best your lawyer could do was get you $500, and then took 30 percent of that for his fee plus costs and expenses?

The Compendium (FCPA Professor)
FCPA Professor | November 20, 2009
Earlier this week, Trace International Inc. released its Compendium – a fully searchable (and free) online data-base of all FCPA enforcement actions – as well as anti-bribery enforcement actions and investigations in other signatory countries to the OECD anti-bribery convention. After spending some time “in” the Compendium, I have that “kid in the candy store” type of feeling.

A sick ASIC should be put out of its misery (The Age)
The Age | November 18, 2009
The time has come to bite the bullet. Disband the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and start all over again. For if there is one thing that has come of yesterday’s mammoth Supreme Court judgment it is this: ASIC, even though it is run by lawyers, seems incapable of putting together a decent case to present to the courts.

The Madoff ‘car boot’ sale was the only place to be (The Guardian)
Guardian | November 18, 2009
Last weekend, I spent eight hours at simply the only place to be in Manhattan: the US Marshals Service National Forfeited Jewellery Auction, also known as the Madoff car-boot sale. And I must tell you, the soupy atmosphere of voyeurism combined with revenge was quite a heady mix, although I did have to take a two-hour shower afterwards.

Subprime Justice (The Big Money)
The Big Money | November 16, 2009
White-collar fraud convictions are notoriously hard, as the recent Bear Sterns acquittals showed. But why aren’t the feds even trying to pursue a criminal investigation of the Big Three credit rating agencies? Because the federal government has almost no power to do so. The credit-rating agencies lie at the heart of our financial markets, but Congress has banned the Securities and Exchange Commission from fining or prosecuting anyone who defrauds investors.

An FCPA Triangle (FCPA Professor)
FCPA Professor | November 13, 2009
First it was the company - Willsbros Group Inc. Then, it was the company’s employees. Finally, it is the company’s consultant. An FCPA triangle of sorts. Don’t hold your breath waiting for an FCPA square because, as has been noted in previous posts, the final piece of the puzzle … the “foreign official” will not be happening anytime soon as the FCPA only applies to the “briber-giver” not the “bribe-taker.”

One of the Biggest Pay-to-Play Deals Is Little Known (Edward Siedle) WSJ
The Wall Street Journal | November 13, 2009
The amount of fees paid by plaintiffs firms to local fund lawyers are largely undisclosed to public-pension boards. In my 25 years of public pension experience I have never met a public-pension board member who had even the vaguest understanding of the massive referral fees local fund counsels receive. These board members would be shocked to find that their local fund counsel earned more for recommending class actions than from hourly billings for providing advice to the fund.