SEC oversight? What SEC oversight? What oversight, period?

Well of course the Madoff arrest raises questions, but whether or not the SEC was providing oversight is hardly one of them. When is the last time we saw an active SEC? Hedge funds were popping up constantly and the GOP sold us on the benefits of a so-called free market system, so no need to employ an active SEC. (Where those lovely folks are today is perhaps a bigger question. When we find them, try not to throw shoes in their general direction.) I suspect Madoff won't be the last scandal to emerge, though possibly the largest.

What jumps out to me is not the lack of oversight or not the actual problem, but the large organizations who are taking massive hits. Surely the big players such as BNP Paribas, HSBC, Santander and UBS don't honestly think that the rest of the world believes the story of shock, do they? This is such an insiders club full of brainpower and statisticians, so I can't imagine that the big banks and their teams of researchers did not detect anything funny going on. How is it that others saw the red flags and Phil Gramm's UBS didn't? People see what they want to see and it sounds like some liked the results, no matter how far fetched they sounded.

What would be nice here is if we started seeing the gutless wonders in Congress hold someone accountable in this systemic failure. Across the board, this has been a failure and Madoff is only a small but predictable crumb of this disaster. And to think neither Americans nor the world want to invest in this steaming pile of dog doo. Unfortunately the future and current retirement plans of the country are at risk so perhaps someone in Congress can find it important enough to develop a spine, instead of another goddamn nightly news video clip.