[JURIST] US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) [official website] Chairman Christopher Cox [official profile] said Thursday in testimony [PDF text] before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform [official website] that the current credit crisis demonstrates a need for more regulation of credit default swaps and investment banking. The hearing was one part in a series examining the origin of the current financial crisis. Cox also advocated for oversight for investment bank holding companies, recognizing each regulatory agency's core competencies, and ensuring that securities regulation and enforcement remain independent. He described the need for a revised regularized system this way:

The current regulatory system is a hodge-podge of divided responsibility and regulatory seams. Coordination among regulators is enormously difficult in this fragmented arrangement, where each of them implements different statutes that treat various financial products and services differently. Today’s balkanized regulatory system undermines the objectives of getting results and ensuring accountability.

Reuters has more. RTT news has additional coverage.

Earlier this month the SEC said that it has begun an agency review [SEC statement; JURIST report] of US financial accounting procedures, including "mark-to-market" [SEC backgrounder] rules, pursuant to the passage of a $700 billion financial rescue bill [JURIST report].