Last Thursday, SEC Chairman Christopher Cox took his turn on the hot seat before the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform United States House of Representatives. His testimony offered some interesting hints about where the SEC might be going - though they're a bit conflicted.

Cox argued that the SEC's strengths - a mandate for investor protection, rather than a supervisory role for institutions - made it the right regulator for the times. As he said, "if the SEC did not exist, Congress would have to create it." And he defended the SEC's turf against encroachment by others:

"Some have tried to use the current credit crisis as an argument for replacing the SEC in a new system that relies more on supervision than on regulation and enforcement. That same recommendation was made before the credit crisis a year ago for a very different, and inconsistent, reason: that the U.S. was at risk of losing business to less-regulated markets. But what happened in the mortgage meltdown and the ensuing credit crisis demonstrates that where SEC regulation is strong and backed by statute, it is effective — and that where it relies on voluntary compliance or simply has no jurisdiction at all, it is not."

That's a bit startling, in that the SEC has been vigorously pushing for a switch to international financial reporting standards. "Losing business to less-regulated markets" hasn't been cited by the SEC as a reason for the switch, but it's certainly been a concern of the exchanges for years. Now it seems the SEC wants to assert itself as the premier independent regulator. Not a bad idea.

One wonders if the SEC is having second thoughts about the idea of tossing GAAP aside. Nowhere in the testimony did Mr. Cox mention the IASB or international financial reporting standards, and the SEC has been dead silent on their proposed roadmap since the end of August.