How many of us called for a modern-day Pecora Commission (whose report led to the passage of Glass-Steagal ) to suss out the true causes of the financial meltdown, and make recommendations toward re-regulation.  Given Congressional and White House love for Big Banking and endless guarantees into the future (some mention numbers as high as $13 trillion, high hopes for the present commission would have seemed out of place, but hell, miracles happen, don't they?  And maybe some hopes that since We Reg'lar Amurricans are getting a mite peeved about financial conditions might influence the committee just a little bit weren't ridiculous, were they?

Yes.  They were absurd hopes.  Ridiculous hopes.  Sham hopes.  The FCIC hearings weren't even good theater; they were boring.  No heat, no tension, no surprises; no nothing.

On May 20, 2009, President Obama signed into law an act which created the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.  It was charged with figuring out what went wrong in the financial sector that led to near-meltdown of the entire global economy, and was charged to issue a report that would lead to preventing future almost-meltdowns.  Cool.

Former California State Treasurer Phil Angelides was appointed Chair of the committee, and Minority and Majority leaders of the House and Senate appointed nine other members.  Among them was my hero, and probably yours, Brooksley Born, former head of the Commodity Futures Trading Board.  It was she who tried to blow the whistle on arcane derivative banking, and its inherent dangers.  She was, of course, side-lined and discredited until recently, when her predictions came true.  When she headed the CFTA, her prescient  testimony before Congress led to new laws actually dismantling banking regulations and Commodity Regulations in place since just after the Great Depression.

January 13, 2010 eight months later, the FCIC begins, and is scheduled for two, count'em, TWO paltry days of hearings!  Just the final month of the 1932 hearing wherein Ferdinand Pecora took over the Chairmanship took a month!   It was grand, it was sweeping, it was Great Theater.  And it was effective!

 Reports of the hearings are universally dismissive; here's Michael Hirsh at Newsweek:

The first sign of trouble came when chairman Phil Angelides thanked the visiting chairmen of Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America for their "thoughtful" opening statements. Things got progressively more pillowy from there, drifting into outright farce when Bill Thomas, the vice chairman, opened with a drawn-out reflection on the Haiti earthquake and then said that all the questions he could possibly have were already on page A27 of the day's New York Times, which had asked financial experts to suggest lines of inquiry. The remaining commissioners followed with a series of mostly general and scattershot questions that turned what should have been a hot seat for the bankers into a Barcalounger.

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The bank CEOs blamed everyone but themselves; "Who knew?" was a common thread; Regulators messed up, Acts of God, Perfect Storms, yada, yada, yada.  When asked if there were things they regretted or would like to apologize for, a couple mentioned some themes, but no one really apologized; thank God.

The only interesting questions and comments came from Brooksley Born, as Hirsh notes:

As commissioner Brooksley Born pointed out during one of the few productive exchanges at the hearing, the four bankers' firms represent about $230 trillion worth of trade in over-the-counter derivatives, much of which is still going unmonitored (prompting another warning recently from Commodity Futures Trade Commission chairman Gary Gensler, who said in a speech that without new rules, the operation of the derivatives market will continue to be like "buying an apple from the supermarket when the price of the apple is kept private" or "buying 100 shares of a stock for your 401[k] with no knowledge of where the market prices the stock").

I confess, the fact Born was appointed to the Commission gave me a modicum of hope for it.  (Yes, cue the giggle-track.) Instead, Born was relegated to last questioner of the CEOs, usually reserved for junior commission members.   She had lobbied Angelides to first question the junior witnesses first, and glean information to then ask ask the Big Guys.  She was over-ruled.  It turned out Born was right again.  From Hirsh:

After the hearing, when JPMorgan chairman Jamie Dimon was asked why the CEOs hadn't been more apologetic, he responded that questioners have to be "very specific" about what they want him and the others to apologize for. They weren't.

Not that apologies would have mattered one iota...

Many economists and former Attorneys General (such as Eliot Spitzer) wrote op-eds listing questions that had to be asked.  Angelides reported after the hearings that he had their questions on a paper, but his dog ate the list.  (That happens to all of us.)

Day 2 was a little more interesting, but not terribly probative:  Sheila Bair (FDIC), Mary Shapiro (SEC), Eric Holder and his assistant Lanny Breuer, and some State Ags (the two I heard weren't bad).

Most of the witnesses provided printed testimony; the bankers' probably read like bad comic books.  All in all, the production was bad theater.  Too sad, too bad.  The House inquiry will still get its shot sometime in the future; the witness list looks more promising, but still: No Special Prosecutor.  Maybe they'll name one?  Eliot Spitzer maybe?

The FCIC will issue report sometime in 2015, I think they said; stay tuned.

It was tempting to attempt some satire here, but there is no way I could have done it better than the Master, Stephen Colbert:   

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/261785/january-14-2010/the-word---honor-bound

(couldn't get it to embed, sorry)

Oh, and by the way: Jump, You Fuckers!  (instead, of course, they shoved US out the windows.)