...doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. The latest failure:

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro said her agency’s oversight of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. was “terribly flawed,” days after a bankruptcy examiner found the SEC didn’t try to stop the firm’s exaggeration of liquid assets.

“It was so terribly flawed in design and execution,” Schapiro testified to a Congressional committee today, referring to SEC examinations aimed at monitoring the soundness of Wall Street’s biggest investment banks. “We were ill-suited because of our enforcement and disclosure mentality.”

Eighteen months after Lehman’s collapse, the 2,200-page report by Anton Valukas has reignited the debate over what regulators should have known and done before Lehman’s collapse triggered a global financial crisis. The House Financial Services Committee said today it will hold a hearing so that lawmakers can question U.S. watchdogs at the time.

Our current regulatory structures are failing the American people, yet, Wall Street is arguing for more of the same. That's ridiculous. We need real change in our regulatory environment, and, we need that change now.

An untold story in the Lehman saga is the role that George W. Bush's SEC Chairman Christopher Cox played. Did he and his Bush Administration cronies look the other way as Wall Street helped usher in the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression?

“Either the SEC and the New York Federal Reserve failed to discover the ongoing accounting fraud at Lehman, or they turned a blind eye,” said Representative Spencer Bachus, an Alabama Republican on the House panel. “In either case, the actions of these two regulators represent a grave failure and should be explored at a public hearing.”

Bachus wants to summon former SEC Chairman Christopher Cox, then-Lehman Chief Executive Officer Richard Fuld and ex-New York Fed President Timothy F. Geithner, who is now U.S. Treasury Secretary. Schapiro, Cox’s successor, took her post in January 2009...

A week after Lehman’s collapse, Cox told Congress that no law authorized the voluntary program to prescribe a companywide liquidity level or enforce SEC leverage requirements. The SEC announced Sept. 26, 2008, the program was ending.

Valukas didn’t draw conclusions in the report about whether the SEC’s interactions with Lehman were appropriate. The SEC allows firms to determine how they disclose liquid assets, so long as they don’t deceive investors. Schapiro has replaced most of the agency’s top officials.

America deserves answers from Christopher Cox and his boss, George W. Bush. It's time for the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission to look into the role that the previous Administration played in contributing to the financial crisis.