Harrisburg illustrates much of what America's securities laws are meant to prevent. In addition to its disastrous mismanagement of a costly rubbish incinerator that has driven the city into receivership, it failed to report critical financial information to bondholders and misreported other data between 2009 and 2011. That Harrisburg is the state capital of Pennsylvania makes such transgressions all the more glaring. The laws underpinning security issuance in America are designed to enable all manner of even seemingly lunatic projects to be financed-with the crucial caveat that disclosure should be comprehensive and accurate. Since Harrisburg clearly failed to provide this, the Securities and Exchange Commission (sec) issued a long report about the city's misdeeds on May 6th.
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