Are the Regulators Even Around Anymore?

There always seems to be some type of scandal going down on Wall Street. Some bigger than others. Still, is there some type of regulation going on or do we choose to just let things go on until someone has to step in? Most recently, I'm sure everyone has seen or read about the Madoff scandal. Sure things like this happen, but should it really have ended 10 years and $50 billion dollars later? What about the financial crisis? Should the government really have stepped in after companies announced that they were going bankrupt? Why did we not see these things earlier?

I think it all starts off with greed. In reference to the financial crisis, companies knew they were leveraging more than they probably should have. Lenders knew that they were allowing more than usual sub-prime loans. The money kept rolling in and soon these fears were put into a closet only to come out when everything backfired. If I gave my money to Bernie Madoff and got constant high-than-expected returns every single year, I might just look away and let my savings continue to pile up. Money makes people do things they wouldn't normally do.

Where was the SEC in all of this? It seems like the primary agency for regulation was missing until it was too late to do anything. Wouldn't they say something when firms were over-leveraging or handing money out to people with bad credit reports. Wouldn't they say something when a fund has constant returns with no volatility at all, especially during a bear market? It seems to me like people just don't want to do their jobs anymore. If you don't like your job then get a new one. Don't let the American people suffer just because you sit on your butt all day behind a desk apparently doing nothing but feeling sorry for yourselves!

People, including myself, complained when the government stepped in and started bailing everyone out. Don't get me wrong, it had to be done. But if they just did their jobs to begin with, it wouldn't have put America into a deeper recession, credit wouldn't be frozen, investors wouldn't be committing suicide over a giant Ponzi scheme. If I was getting higher commissions or bonuses, I might not say anything either. However, the SEC does not get any commission from these sort of deals so what were they doing? Wasting our tax dollars...point blank.