Any industry these days is concerned with brand and public image, but the SEC has taken it to a whole new level since the crises – in their case: crisis.

It was supposed to be a sleepy but powerful post Great Depression era watchdog operating in the background for the protection of the common man (and woman), something a little bit like Spider-, Super- or Ironman, but somehow the SEC nowadays is much closer to Robert Downey Jr.’s unwanted pre-Ironman drug headlines than the quiet Baker street analyst, Sherlock Holmes.

But, let’s review the basic tenets before we get to the juicy stuff (it’s still odd to me to write SEC and juicy in the same sentence, but they successfully reinvented themselves).

“The mission of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is to protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation.”

Weeeeeell, that hasn’t really been going to well since Bernie and Sir Allen showed up out of nowhere. They actually didn’t really show up out of nowhere, a lot of people ran over to the SEC to raise a variety of flags, but, I am surprised to say, the current headlines have managed to surpass M. Madoff in terms of celebrity factor. Sort of like Lady Gaga leaving Britney Spears in the Iceland dust.

And it started pretty well inasmuch as emergency responses are concerned. Fire the white gray-haired man and put a successful woman in charge to clean house and reinstate fear and trembling.

And, yet again, it looked good when the SEC came out with blazing guns to charge Goldman Sachs with fraud last week.

And then? Porn.

As many journalists said late in the week: you can’t make this stuff up.

Since the financial system almost collapsed the inspector general conducted over 30 probes of employees checking out porn instead of balance sheets.

Hm.

Most of you have seen it already (ABC News reported on the memo on Thursday), but let’s recap for kicks.

The economy is nearing another great depression, the financial world is on the brink of disaster and huge corporations are collapsing.

What does the senior attorney at the SEC Washington headquarter do all day? Check out and download porn, supposedly eight hours a day. If you make porn your day job, naturally, you have to put the stuff somewhere and hard drives tend to run out of space. So he burns the files to DVDs and puts them in boxes around his office.

Excellent organizational skills.

Well, that’s the attorney. Since Enron we all know that the real power lies with the accountants, so surely they are saving the world. Not exactly, they decided to leave that up to Ironman and jump on the porn wagon. But, at least they are thorough and tenacious. One of them, accountants that is, was blocked more than 16,000 times in one month from visiting classified porn sites, because the SEC takes those firewalls serious. But, smart man, he then bypassed the SEC filters and filled his hard drive by using Google images. The SEC gave him a two-week suspension.

Downloading porn is tough, so it’s better left to senior level employees. Apparently close to 20 of them made $250,000 a year.

Chairman Schapiro these days can’t be happy.

The latest SEC charge might be inspired by her trying to make sure her name remains intact while maneuvering these treacherous waters (I guess it would be inappropriate to bring up Warren Buffett’s “when the tide goes out” comment).

This weekend on top of the SEC’s website:

“The SEC has charged a prominent Miami Beach-based businessman and philanthropist with orchestrating a $900 million offering fraud and Ponzi scheme” His name? Nevin K. Shapiro.