SEC is 0-8 on Madoff probes

Today Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) will grill the SEC on why it missed the $50 billion Madoff Securities Ponzi scheme. After all, over the last 16 years, the SEC investigated Madoff eight times and each of those times, it failed to discover the scam. This -- and so much more -- means it's time for a change in the way Washington regulates Wall Street.

And Frank is sure to use today's stage to talk. Last Monday, I appeared on a TV program in Boston "with" Frank. I put "with" in quotes because when Frank arrived at the TV studio, he made sure that me and any other guests who were to appear got thrown out of the green room so he could have it to himself. And while I was on the set with Frank -- I was scheduled to go on the show right after him -- he never even looked at me -- by contrast, every other person I have appeared with was happy to introduce themselves.

Frank likes to talk -- he used 25 of the 30 minutes (he was supposed to take up about 15 minutes). (And in the four minutes Frank left me, I gave out a few Bernie awards for the worst financial foibles of 2008.) So when he chairs hearings today, Frank will no doubt do quite a bit of talking. And he'll probably ask why the SEC officials failed to discover the Madoff scandal after receiving emails from a New York hedge fund that described his business practices as "highly unusual." As I posted, I think Frank should focus on the village that enabled Madoff.

Let's hope things get better this year.

Peter Cohan is president of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College. His eighth book is You Can't Order Change: Lessons from Jim McNerney's Turnaround at Boeing.