TEXT OF STORY

Doug Krizner: Five people sit on the Securities and Exchange Commission. Normally, it’s two Democrats and three Republicans. One Democrat left the SEC last September. The other is leaving the agency today. Nancy Marshall Genzer looks at the effects of their departures.

Nancy Marshall Genzer: Democrat Annette Nazareth is leaving the SEC at a critical time. The agency is juggling three dozen subprime investigations.

Former SEC chief accountant Lynn Turner says with both Democrats gone, the agency has lost its toughest enforcers.

Lynn Turner: We probably have a kinder, gentler SEC, rather than one that is really going to turn out to be a strong cop on the beat, a dog with more than just bark if you will.

Ed Fleischman is a former SEC commissioner, now an attorney with Linklaters LLP. He says SEC hasn’t lost its bite.

Ed Fleischman: The other 2,300 or 2,500 people in the agency go on working just the same, whether or not there’s two commissioners, three, four or five.

Turner says it was like that a decade ago. But he says since the current SEC chairman, Christopher Cox, came in, agency staffers have been on a much tighter leash.

In Washington, I’m Nancy Marshall Genzer for Marketplace.