PunditMom

Please forgive yet another Brady Bunch reference. I couldn’t help myself!

Our long national Martha Stewart nightmare is apparently over. You thought it was done when she was released from prison and done with the attractive ankle bracelet? Oh no … we were still waiting to see what the SEC would do. Now we know.

Martha must fork over about $200K and cannot be an officer or director of a publicly traded company for five years (what’s called an “O&D bar”). And the SEC thinks this is a good outcome? I don’t say that lightly, having been an SEC enforcement attorney for five years and I’m all about enforcing the securities laws so everybody has a fair shot at investing. But I’ve always thought the government’s reaction to Martha’s relatively minor transgressions (especially when compared with the Enron and WorldCom guys) was overkill.

Do they really think that $200,000 is going to hurt her pocket? Or that she could even care less about whether she’s on any public board at this stage of her life? She has to be happy as a clam that her business is still doing quite well, thank you very much, as a result of her committed domestic acolytes (or is that domestic acolytes who should be committed? But I digress).

Sure, the price of her stock isn’t what is used to be and her version of The Apprentice was a bust, but she’s still got her domestic crafts show, her website, her products, you catch my drift. Martha is not only still a cultural icon and phenomenon, but she’s still pretty darn wealthy, too. I have a feeling that with this SEC settlement, she’s going to be celebrating that she can finally forget about federal prosecutors and leave her future investing strategies to her financial advisor.

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