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In a stunning rebuke, the Securities and Exchange Commission chairman blames his career regulators for a decade-long failure to investigate Wall Street money manager Bernard L. Madoff, now accused of running one of the largest Ponzi schemes ever.

On Tuesday night, SEC Chairman Christopher Cox ordered an internal investigation of what went wrong and offered a scathing critique of the conduct of his staff attorneys. He said they never bothered to seek a formal commission-approved investigation that would have forced Madoff to surrender vital information under subpoena. Instead, the staff relied on information voluntarily produced by Madoff and his firm.

Credible and specific allegations regarding Madoff's financial wrongdoing going back to at least 1999 were repeatedly brought to the attention of SEC staff, said Cox.

A former SEC attorney, Eric Swanson, married Madoff's niece, Shana, last year, The Wall Street Journal reported. The SEC's compliance office issued a statement Wednesday saying that Swanson was part of a team that looked into Madoff's securities brokerage operation in 1999 and 2004. The SEC cited its "strict rules" prohibiting employees from participating in cases involving firms where they have a personal interest.

The SEC's inspector general, David Kotz, told the Journal that he intends to examine the relationship between Madoff's niece and Swanson.

Madoff remains free on $10 million bail. A hearing is scheduled in federal court in New York on Wednesday afternoon to iron out the terms of his bail package.

Shock waves from the Madoff affair have radiated around the globe as a growing number of prestigious charitable foundations, big international banks and individual investors acknowledge falling victim to an unprecedented fraud.

Wearing yellow badges and traveling in groups of 10 or more, agency review teams for President-elect Barack Obama have swarmed into dozens of government offices, from the Pentagon to the National Council on Disability.

With pointed questions and clear ground rules, they are dissecting agency initiatives, poring over budgets and unearthing documents that may prove crucial as a new Democratic president assumes control. Their job is to minimize the natural tension between incoming and outgoing administrations, but their work also is creating anxiety among some Bush administration officials as the teams rigorously examine programs and policies.

Lisa Brown, who served as counsel to Vice President Al Gore and is helping manage the reviews, said typical questions include: "Which is the division that has really run amok? Or that has run out of money? If someone is confirmed, what's going to be on their desk from Day One? What are the main things that need to happen, vis-a-vis Obama's priorities?"

Every presidential changeover includes some type of review of the federal landscape, but some have succeeded more than others, experts say. Obama's teams -- 135 people divided into 10 groups, along with a list of other advisers -- started earlier than most, gearing up months before Election Day with preliminary planning, and will work until mid-December preparing reports to guide the White House, Cabinet members and other senior officials.

The team members include Democratic Party loyalists jockeying for senior administration jobs and subject experts in areas ranging from military systems to Medicare policy.

The Obama teams say they have benefited from a commitment by the Bush White House to cooperate as fully as possible to ease the shift.

"President Bush initiated preparations for the transition earlier, and with more extensive planning, than has ever been done before," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto. "We've also benefited from new legal authorities that allowed for better preparation of the transition teams. As we're at war, defending the nation against terrorist threats, and addressing a global financial crisis, it's more critical than ever that we have a successful transition."

John D. Podesta, a former Clinton White House chief of staff and co-chairman of the Obama transition, said the Obama teams have been dispatched with "clear roles and missions." In assembling the study groups, Podesta drew heavily from the Clinton administration, academia and think tanks such as his own, the Center for American Progress. Many team members were informal advisers to Obama throughout the campaign -- such as Sarah Sewall, a Harvard University human rights specialist who is a leader of the national security team.

Many chosen for the teams come with high-level, firsthand knowledge of certain agencies.

"They were part of that culture; they understand the political issues as well as the bureaucratic issues," said Melody C. Barnes, Obama's incoming Domestic Policy Council director, who is helping with the agency reviews.

Some teams parachuted in at the top. At the State Department, Obama team leaders Tom Donilon and Wendy R. Sherman met with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. At the Pentagon, transition team members John White and Michèle A. Flournoy dropped by the offices of four senior officials and arranged for further interviews over the coming days. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates named a transition leader, Robert Rangel, to work with the group, even though Gates is slated to continue in his job when Obama takes office.

A typical approach has been playing out at the Environmental Protection Agency, where the Obama team is led by Lisa Jackson, commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, and Robert Sussman, a former Clinton official and now a lawyer and fellow at the Center for American Progress. Both are considered front-runners for senior administration jobs (Jackson as EPA administrator, Sussman as a top EPA deputy).

The rating agency Standard & Poor's assigned an "A-" debt rating to online auctioneer eBay Inc. on Monday, citing the company's well-established Internet brand as well as strong cash flow and liquidity.

The "A-" rating is investment grade but signifies that economic conditions may affect the company's finances.

The outlook is "Positive."

In a statement, Standard & Poor's analyst Philip Schrank said, "The rating on eBay reflects its well established brands in Internet e-commerce and payment segments, coupled with strong discretionary cash flow generation and ample liquidity."

Schrank cautioned that risks remain for the San Jose, Calif.-based company on a number of fronts: its performance relies somewhat on ongoing acquisitions, it faces rising competition from traditional retailers, entry costs in its market are low and consumer spending is being pulled back amid a credit shortage.

On the positive side, he said eBay's large customer base and low working capital needs should generate stable profits and cash flow even as the economy slows.

Schrank also predicts eBay's subsidiary PayPal - which processes online payments - will grow as more financial transactions move online. He added that eBay's recent acquisition of Bill Me Later, which allows online shoppers to pay without a credit card, should dovetail well with PayPal, and start generating a profit in the "near term."

The company's stock fell with the broader market Monday, sliding 51 cents, or 3.9 percent, to $12.62.

Unemployment in the 15 nations that share the euro shot up to 7.7 percent in October - the highest level in two years - as growth dropped sharply, the EU statistics agency Eurostat said Friday.

Prices also plunged with the annual inflation rate sinking to 2.1 percent in November from 3.2 percent in October, Eurostat said. Lower inflation gives the European Central Bank more room to reduce interest rates, which would help stoke growth.

The euro area officially went into a recession in spring and summer this year when growth shrank in the second and third quarters, as a financial crisis curbed global demand.

In real terms, this means job losses - lots of them and more to come.

Eurostat said some 225,000 more people were seeking work in October from the previous month. That means some 12 million people in the euro area were out of work last month. It also said unemployment in September was worse than it had first estimated, revising the rate upward to 7.6 percent from the 7.5 percent it reported last month.

Across all the EU's 27 states, some 17 million people were job-hunting in October, 290,000 more than a month earlier. The EU jobless rate was 7.1 percent in October, up from 7 percent in September.

The EU's executive Commission forecasts that the labor market will get even worse next year, with the euro-zone rate climbing to 8.4 percent in 2009 from a decade-low of 7 percent at the end of 2007. This will see an extra 2 million people out of work.