(Repeating item that initially moved on Sunday)

By Rachelle Younglai

WASHINGTON, Jan 4 (Reuters) - Christopher Cox will most likely be remembered as the regulator who was unable to do enough to protect investors during the worst U.S. financial crisis since the Great Depression.

When the 28th chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission steps down early this year, he will leave behind an agency tarnished by regulatory missteps and threatened with being reorganized out of existence by a reform-minded Congress.

Under Cox's watch the investment banks that the SEC loosely supervised either collapsed or reorganized as bank holding companies in 2008 and the agency was criticized for interfering with free markets when it temporarily stopped investors from making bearish bets on financial stocks.

The most recent blow to the agency, now entering its 75th year, was its failure to spot financier Bernard Madoff's alleged $50 billion securities fraud before he was arrested.

Some of the criticism is undeserved, securities experts said, as the genesis of the crisis began well before Cox became chairman and the cures extend beyond the reach of the agency. However the perception remains that the 56-year-old former California congressman did not do enough to protect investors.

"Cox had the greatest perception of inactivity in the face of this crisis. People wanted the SEC to be this outspoken proponent of investor protection, reinvigorate its mission and let people know that the SEC was on top of this," said Jay Brown, a securities professor at Sturm College of Law.

"What has ended up happening is that it has been one inadequacy after another. Not only does the chairman not get out in front of these issues, it looks like the SEC was asleep at the switch."