CORRECTION: Five years ago, Cox wasn't chairman of the SEC; Bill Donaldson was. Moreover, the SEC, under Cox, Donaldson, or anyone, didn't increase the leverage limit; no such limit existed until the SEC, in 2004, under Donaldson, created a voluntary program where no regulation (or statutory authority for a mandatory program) existed. The voluntary program was based on Basel II standards that were supposedly more precise than older banking regulations -- just another example of why regulation doesn't work as well as market transparency. If Congress really wanted to raise the ire of the banking lobby, it would require that the private securities at the heart of the crisis -- created more by the banking and mortgage industries than by the securities industry -- be as transparent as the public securities that the SEC has regulated well for 75 years. The big mistake was creating moral hazard by giving implied if not explicit government backing (via GSE's, tax policy, preferential regulation, etc.) to instruments with excessive leverage and then usurping the power of the bankruptcy court to impose accountability on Bear Stearns' management, shareholders, and creditors. The Speier amendment shouldn't have much effect since the surviving firms that did the high-leverage deals already converted themselves to banks and are thus already subject to the lower leverage limits.