The Regulator Shuffle

The usual bureaucratic response to adversity is to rearrange the deck chairs as the ship goes down. But the Securities and Exchange Commission, whose task had been to regulate the now-defunct -- okay, transformed -- investment banking industry has come up with a creative variant.

As the economy faces the biggest meltdown in three score and 10 years, the SEC has launched its new "Restacking Project." This is a six-month, $4.1 million reshuffling of offices that will require most of the 1,900 headquarters employees -- lawyers and accountants, for the most part -- to move their offices. Even better, at least 170 may have to move twice, once to temporary office space for a few months and then to their permanent offices.

It's not that the headquarters is decrepit. In fact, the agency just moved into its two leased buildings near Union Station in 2005. And the headquarters was built, with only a $19 million budget overrun, to SEC specs.

The agency's special newsletter, the Restacker -- there's also a hotline number, a help desk in Room 3465, and an e-mail address to handle computer or communications problems -- explains that the current musical chairs were planned long before the meltdown. It is a response to "a recurrent complaint" from various offices that people were "frustrated by the time it takes to communicate," even with people in their own divisions, who might be on different floors.

The goal was to get everyone together on the same floor, which certainly isn't a bad idea. As one newsletter notes, you'll no longer "be forced to use space on another floor" to store your files. Yes, "you'll have what you need where and when you need it!"

Of course, most staffers apparently communicate largely by e-mail. And many of them telecommute for a significant part of their workdays, presumably taking their needed files along.

Construction is scheduled to begin next week and should be done by May. So you may think the SEC folks are hard at work regulating and such. But actually, they're picking up moving supplies, getting packing crates, packing, unpacking, repacking . . .

And, because the investment banking industry isn't what it used to be, there's chatter about the SEC merging with other government agencies. Probably best not to throw out those boxes.

Pass the Poison Darts

Very little of note has been written about President-elect Barack Obama's meeting with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), his former rival, other than how it was respectful and amicable as they talked about climate change, Guantanamo Bay and immigration. (Remember that issue?)

But it's most likely that Obama would have asked for -- and received -- solid advice from McCain on the latter's secret plan to catch or kill Osama bin Laden. "I'll get Osama bin Laden, my friends. I'll get him. I know how to get him," McCain said during their Oct. 7 debate in Nashville.

"I'll get him no matter what, and I know how to do it," he added. "But I'm not going to telegraph my punches, which is what Senator Obama did."

Now that Obama's got the info, it's just a matter of time.