I totally agree with this. The SEC is incompetent. Totally, and Cox should be fired. They allow completely bogus assets to be reported on 10-Ks and 10-Qs. Cramer is dead wrong on this. They continue to permit blatant Reg FD violations, which are widespread. They instituted option expensing, which is an idiotic accounting notion, under political pressure.
Last Thursday on his show, Rush played a soundbite of Hank (Maurice R.) Greenberg, he man who built AIG (incidentally, Greenberg has a Bronze Star from WWII, and his unit liberated Dachau Concentration Camp). Basically, Greenberg said that you can have regulations out the kazoo, but they don't mean a thing if incompetent or dishonest "regulatora" abuse the regs and cheat, etc. Transcript follows: GREENBERG: What is regulation? You can't replace management with regulation. Management is still responsible in the final analysis. If you do the right risk management and you have the right controls, then regulation is not going to make a difference there. If you have poor management, you can have all the regulation in the world and that's not going to change anything. And so, you know, my guess is that the problems that have come about have been management problems more than regulatory.
Source: Greenberg quote
There is a argument to be made for regulating the derivatives market and causing them to be traded differently like options and not like bonds.
This is one area that does need attention. It is essentially unregulated and a big part of this problem that people saw coming a long time ago.