NYTimes today posted an article on how chairman Christopher Cox just suspended the SEC’s “Voluntary Supervision” program for Wall St. investment banks. Apparently letting gigantic financial institutions decide if they want to be supervised can lead to some kind of major problems.

“The last six months have made it abundantly clear that voluntary regulation does not work,” he said in a statement. The program “was fundamentally flawed from the beginning, because investment banks could opt in or out of supervision voluntarily. The fact that investment bank holding companies could withdraw from this voluntary supervision at their discretion diminished the perceived mandate” of the program, and “weakened its effectiveness,” he added.

Who would have guessed letting the fox run the hen house might lead to some bloody feathers? I heard on NPR last week that Cox actually declined to accept additional funds to help with regulation by congress and that he was unavailable for comment last weekend becuase he was on a “family vacation”. What a dousche bag!

Thank god they finally handed over the regulatory reigns to the Fed Chief, Henry Paulson. He doesn’t have any ties to the investment banking industry does he?