Indeed, there could not have been a financial crisis were it not for abusive executive-suite practices that fall squarely within the SEC’s bailiwick. Just the other day, Goldman Sachs admitted that it had made a huge wager on a housing downturn at the same time that it was selling mortgage-backed securities that were predicated on the housing market remaining strong. Had the task forces existed a few years ago, which one would have tackled such an atrocity? “Structured and new products” would seem to come closest, but the problem there was not inherent in the product as it was the way those new products were sold to investors—by a bank that felt strongly the housing bubble appeared ready to burst, thereby likely to make those products worthless.

There are plenty of laws on the books against securities fraud, as well as Sarbanes-Oxley, passed after Enron, which is supposed to prevent breaches in corporate integrity by encouraging the promulgation and enforcement of codes of ethics. Lots of good all these laws do us when the SEC isn’t enforcing them.

It’s not at all surprising that the SEC reorganization totally forgot about the special challenges posed by small companies and entrepreneurs. Yes, the SEC has an office devoted to small business and holds annual forums on small-business capital formation, but none of these small-biz efforts focus on the marketplace. Fraud and abuse has long plagued the small-cap end of the stock market and the capital-raising venues for entrepreneurs such as private placements. This has cast a pall over raising capital for entrepreneurs and small companies.

True, only a small part of the market is involved. But keep in mind that even the smallest shady companies spin off hundreds and even thousands of disgruntled investors. One alleged diamond company scam I’ve been following, recently the subject of a federal indictment, is said to have victimized as many as 60,000 investors. If each of those investors told their tale of woe to 10 people, you can see the danger of small-company fraud. In its reorganization, the SEC missed an opportunity to place a special emphasis on cleaning up this perennial source of trouble in order to improve the capital-raising picture for honest small companies and entrepreneurs.

In the end, task forces and organizational charts won’t make much difference. The will to enforce the law is even more important. During the analyst scandals that followed the tech bust of a decade ago, the SEC was in a race with Eliot Spitzer to see which analyst scalps it could acquire for doing precisely the same thing as Goldman seems to have done. But Spitzer is gone, and in recent years there has been little motivation at the SEC to deal with powerful banks like Goldman.

SEC chairperson Mary Schapiro and her new enforcement boss Robert Khuzami deserve kudos for working to turn the agency around. They’ve made it easier to initiate investigations and issue subpoenas. But they need to rethink their priorities.