Promising "the most substantial rewrite of the laws governing the U.S. financial markets since the Great Depression," a Congressional committee has released a list of witnesses that it has called for hearings on the Bernard Madoff scandal, starting this Monday. And the makeup of the list suggests that lawmakers are serious about getting to the bottom of the Madoff matter, and preventing a repeat.

According to a press release, Rep. Paul Kanjorski will call the following witnesses before the House Financial Services committee:

- Mr. H. David Kotz, Inspector General, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
- Mr. Stephen P. Harbeck, President, Securities Investor Protection Corporation
- Mr. Harry Markopolos, an independent financial fraud investigator for institutional investors and others seeking forensic accounting expertise, as well as a Chartered - Financial Analyst and Certified Fraud Examiner
- Mr. Allan Goldstein, a retiree and investor with Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities
- Ms. Tamar Frankel, Professor of Law and Michaels Faculty Research Scholar, Boston University School of Law
- Mr. Leon Metzger, adjunct faculty member at Columbia University, Cornell University, New York University, and Yale University

There are a number of interesting things here....

As SEC IG, Kotz is, at the request of the agency's chair Chris Cox, looking into how the SEC missed an alleged fraud of Madoff's size, during several investigations into his business over the last decade. So the invitation to Kotz to testify suggests that Kanjorski and his colleagues will focus in part on fixing the SEC's myriad problems.

The SIPC is a federal fund created to cover fraud losses in brokerage accounts, which is preparing to compensate Madoff investors. So the inclusion of its president, Stephen Harbeck, suggests the committee will also focus on the pressing question of which of Madoff's alleged victims will be made whole -- an issue that currently remains opaque. That impression is reinforced by the inclusion of a Madoff investor, Allan Goldstein, on the list.

But the name Harry Markopolos may stand out the most. It was Markopolos, then a rival broker, who first argued, in a detailed complaint to the SEC, that Madoff's returns were too consistently high to have been achieved honestly. His testimony could provide some preliminary insight into how Madoff set up a system that deceived investors and regulators for so long.

We'll bring you all the news from the hearings next week...

In his statement released last week in response to the SEC's failure to catch Bernard Madoff's alleged "$50 billion ponzi scheme", commission chair Chris Cox lamented his staff's failure, during previous investigations, to seek subpoenas to compel Madoff to provide information. But according to a veteran agency source, under Cox's leadership the commission has made it increasingly difficult for investigators to obtain subpoenas, with the inevitable result that they have become less likely to ask for them.

In the statement, Cox wrote:

I am gravely concerned by the apparent multiple failures over at least a decade to thoroughly investigate these allegations or at any point to seek formal authority to pursue them. Moreover, a consequence of the failure to seek a formal order of investigation from the Commission is that subpoena power was not used to obtain information, but rather the staff relied upon information voluntarily produced by Mr. Madoff and his firm.

That passage appears to refer most directly to a 2006-2007 SEC probe in which investigators relied only on documents handed over voluntarily by Madoff, and which has emerged as the most glaring example of SEC failure on Madoff. But according to a longtime enforcement staffer, the failure to seek subpoena power in this case was in large part a natural result of the chairman's own policy.

"Under Cox, increasingly burdensome standards were applied to obtain subpoena power," the source told TPMmuckraker in an interview. For investigators to obtain subpoena power, they're required to write a memo to the SEC's commissioners. Previous commissioners were more willing to respond by granting subpoena requests. "But under Cox," the source continued, "when you bring your memo down there, they pepper you with questions. It dies a thousand-cuts death."

The source added that a running joke has developed among enforcement staffers that the commissioners apply a "summary judgment standard" -- in other words, requiring enough evidence to make a full ruling -- merely to agree to issue a subpoena. (SEC humor, perhaps -- but indicative of what the source describes as the commissioners' extreme reluctance to issue subpoenas.)

That in turn produced "a chilling effect", said the source, in which investigators became less and less likely to ask for subpoena power -- exactly what Cox appears to criticize his enforcement staff for in his statement on the Madoff case.

The source made clear that the commissioners' greater reluctance, under Cox, to issue subpoenas was part of Cox's well-documented "ideological bent against enforcement," especially in regard to large financial entities.

The revelation that Bernard Madoff -- who himself had in the past served as an adviser to the SEC on electronic trading -- was running an alleged "$50 billion ponzi scheme" has rocked the SEC to its core, according to a current long-serving member of the commission's enforcement division.

"This has put the agency into a state of complete panic," the SECer told TPMmuckraker in an interview.

The source said that one associate director in the enforcement division had in recent days ordered junior staff to review every case that's been closed over the last few years, to ensure that violations weren't missed -- as they appear to have been in the 2006 investigation of Madoff. "There's a real paranoia around here," the source added.

That paranoia -- or at least extreme concern -- apparently extends to commission officials in Washington. The source said that since the Madoff allegations came to light last week, SEC brass had sent out numerous emails warning staffers not to destroy documents relating to the case -- which is being investigated both by SEC enforcement and by the FBI. There have also been several warnings not to speak with the press, the source added.

Separate from the SEC and FBI investigations, SEC chair Chris Cox announced last week that he has has asked the commission's inspector general to probe how the SEC failed to uncover catch Madoff after receiving several complaints going back to 1999.

There's no longer much debate about the fact that the SEC badly slipped up by failing to catch Bernard Madoff's alleged "$50 billion ponzi scheme." Even commission chair Chris Cox lamented "multiple failures over at least a decade" in the matter. And yesterday President-elect Barack Obama declared that the commission had "dropped the ball."

But it's also becoming clear that the Madoff failures didn't arise out of nowhere. In recent years, particularly under Cox, a former California GOP congressman, the SEC has pursued a policy of de-emphasizing enforcement, part of the broader anti-regulatory philosophy of the Bush years -- helping to make Madoff, and perhaps others like him, possible.

"[Cox] in many ways worked to dismantle the SEC," Ed Nordlinger, a former longtime enforcement director in the commission's New York office, told TPMmuckraker. "He slowed everything down. I don't think he believed in heavy regulation."

That view has been echoed by several others in a position to know. Ross Albert told TPMmuckraker for a post published yesterday: "Under Cox, SEC had de-emphasized the enforcement program. Cox worshipped at the same altar of de-regulation that the rest of the Bush administration worshipped at."

And a former enforcement division supervisor told Portfolio for a lengthy October story about the SEC under Cox: "It was like someone poured molasses on the enforcement division."

How, specifically? Let us count the ways -- many of them detailed in that Portfolio story -- which focused on what it described as Cox's scaling back of the commission's enforcement role and was titled "SEC No Evil" -- as well as a followup web piece by the same writer, Scott Paltrow.

First, the SEC under Cox did not take steps to make sure that it had enough inspectors to look into the fast-growing number of financial institutions requiring regulation.

The enforcement division has actually lost staff under Cox, even as its workload increased. "Since Cox took office in 2005, the staff count in the division has dropped 9 percent, to 1,124 people this year," reports Portfolio.

Cox's predecessor, William Donaldson, a friend of the Bush family, told the magazine, carefully: "With the kind of problems we have now, any attempt to reduce the effective role of the S.E.C. as a policeman has been a mistake."

We're hoping to have more extensive numbers on this later today, but former SEC chair Arthur Levitt recently told Bloomberg that in 2004, the agency had 477 people in its inspection office, overseeing about 8,000 investment advisers, while today, 430 people regulate 11,300 advisers.

And a union rep for SEC workers told the Washington Post for a story published today that employees were "outgunned" and "underfunded."

Cox also, according to Portfolio, didn't replace the head of the S.E.C.'s new risk-assessment office -- created under Donaldson to improve the commission's ability to anticipate financial upheavals like the one we're in now -- for nearly two years.

But it's not just a human resources problem. According to the magazine, Cox instituted new rules which gave the commissioners, rather than the enforcement staffers, the power to negotiate fines against public companies in certain cases. The result has been a drop in penalties since the rule came into effect.

Portfolio added:

A January analysis by the law firm Morgan Lewis found that S.E.C. penalties have dropped by a "staggering degree" and that "the numbers suggest a philosophical shift by the Cox commission in what constitutes an appropriate penalty."

And Cox distanced himself from the enforcement division, according to Portfolio, rarely consulting with its director. His predecessors had conferred daily with their enforcement directors.

The commission also appears to have passed over for promotion staff members who were too aggressive in their approach to enforcement. Veteran S.E.C. lawyer James Coffman told Portfolio that he was told he didn't get a promotion because he was "too tough." He left the SEC soon after.

In addition, Cox failed to fix a communications problem within the commission, which made enforcement harder. Portfolio reports:

Madoff was required to tell one S.E.C. office how much money he managed as an investment adviser, but was required to report his actual trading positions to another office.

Katz [a former secretary to the commission] said if the two had been compared, investigators may well have discovered a big discrepancy that would have triggered a focused investigation.

Cox will step down when the Bush administration leaves office. Obama's pick for the job, Mary Schapiro, has a reputation as a dedicated regulator, and close SEC watchers expect her to move the commission back toward its enforcement mission -- a shift that appears to have been necessary long before Bernard Madoff became a household name.