November 16,2000, may be remembered for an event that few insiders would have ever thought possible. It was the day that Arthur Levitt Jr. gave up on one of his last crusades as head of the SEC. It was the day that the big bosses at the nation's Big Five accounting firms—Arthur Andersen (which now goes by Andersen), Deloitte & Touche, Ernst & Young, KPMG, and PricewaterhouseCoopers—got what they wanted. It was also the day that many people felt the Securities and Exchange Commission had given up on its ideals of objectivity and independence.
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