The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced Friday a decision by the Division of Trading and Markets to end the Consolidated Supervised Entities (CSE) program, now that the five participants have collapsed or reorganized.SEC’s Chairman Christopher Cox in his statement made it very clear that the CSE program was fundamentally flawed from the beginning, since investment bank holding co.’s like: Goldman Sachs (GS), Morgan Stanley (MS), Merrill Lynch (MER), Lehman Brothers (LEH), and Bear Stearns (BSC) could opt in or out of supervision at their discretion - thus significantly diminishing the effectiveness of the program, and practically leaving the SEC or any agency for that matter with no authority to regulate.“The last six months have made it abundantly clear that voluntary regulation does not work,” SEC Chairman Cox said.However, Mr. Cox in his statement pointed out that with each of the major [More...]