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Darrell Issa Seeks To Expand AIG Disclosure Inquiry To Ben Bernanke, Hank Paulson And Goldman's Friedman
It is about time someone asked for this: Darrell Issa has finally demanded that which is on everyone's mind - the testimony of the kingpins of the bailout: Bernanke and Paulson.
Bernanke and Paulson should provide statements about
the decision to fully reimburse New York-based AIG’s bank
counterparties for $62.1 billion in derivatives and efforts to limit
disclosure about the payments, Darrell Issa, ranking member of the
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said today in a
letter. Treasury and the Federal Reserve should be subpoenaed for
documents tied to the rescue, Issa said.
“This committee’s investigation will not be complete
until we gain the perspective of all the most senior government
officials responsible for the AIG bailout,” Issa said in the letter to
Edolphus Towns, the New York Democrat who is chairman of the panel.
“The perspective of Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson and documents in the
possession of the Federal Reserve Board and the Treasury Department are
necessary.”
We applaud Congressman Issa's persistence in this matter. In addition to the above, the WSJ now reports that Goldman's Stephen Friedman, who was chairman of the NY Fed at the time, has also been "invited." Zero Hedge petitioned a week ago that Mr. Friedman should not be forgotten in the hustle and bustle to blame everything on Tim. We are happy that the former Goldman Board member will be willing and able to discuss any potential impropriety that may have arisen from selling CDS protection on AIG to fund the difference from the collateral margin to par (in essence making them whole and half) in a time when public disclosure on the government's attachment to AIG was limited to a select few.
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This is very good news.
What a little piggie that piece of shit Friedman is. Talk about a major conflict of interest and I would argue trading on material and non disclosed info.
What a classless pig.
I fear for Issa's life.
Issa? He's the richest member of Congress:
http://www.opensecrets.org/pfds/overview.php?type=W&year=2008
I trust him just like the other demagogue, Grayson. This is just pomp and theather.
And he has a criminal history.
thanks Lloyd....sometimes we have to look past others transgressions to get to you and your buddies
Nice try.
Pomp and theater away, Darrell !!
If he wants to be the modern-day Pecora of the Congress, that sounds good to me. Issa is relatively young and doesn't need to go whore for the political grease. He at least has some balls....and wants higher office. That's okay. I sure wish he had it now.
CA is awash with creepy electeds ....think Pelosi, Boxer, Feinstein. Issa looks pretty damn good in comparison to that collection, that's for sure.
He's been chewing on the Fed/bailout bone for a while . I hope he can help crack it in two. I'm sure he smells the con. Probably got burned heavy by the con, too.
I hear ya about taking the least corrupt - what I really want to see is Dodd and Frank in the hot seat with some incisive questions about loading Fanny and Freddie full of toxic waste. But that would never happen. Politics is all strategy and no justice these days. For damnsakes Ron Paul knows there will never be an audit with teeth - it's a means to an end, not the end itself anyway - it's more like a doomsday device.
http://www.meetatthegate.com/image-files/strangelove.gif
In this we should follow the example of Marshal and four-time Hero of the Soviet Union G. K. Zhukov.
In January 1943, when he had trapped the Sixth Army in the Stalingrad Pocket, Marshal Zhukov resisted the temptation to destroy the units sent in attempt to relieve the Pocket.
Instead, he waited until the Sixth Army had surrendered and the Germans and Romanians before moving forward, step by step to victory, always securing each objective before attempting the next, defeating his enemies piecemeal rather than trying to take them all at once.
Otherwise, you risk achieving nothing.
i fear for the lives of everyone's 401(k)'s once this pyrrhic victory is achieved.
permit me ask one simple question: would you rather live in a world ...
1) of rampant HFT, flash algos, dark pools, Jim Chanos etc. where "bankstas" and WS folk are paid handsomely, egregiously even ... and financial markets stay afloat if not rise;
OR
2) of no short selling, no HFT, no flash algos, no dark pools, where "bankstas" and WS folk are paid "normal wages", pathetically even ... and financial markets crash like you simply cannot even begin to imagine.
do you want to feel good for a few minutes (emotionally) and then see the equity markets crash harder than almost anyone can imagine or would you prefer any chance in hell at not crashing cause its just that simple.
be very careful what you wish for retail cause you just might get it ... and a DJ crashing below 87's level.
yeah, keep laughing. lemme know how it all works for you in the end. geniuses.
I wish I knew that Issa has 'true intentions' for the health of the USA. I really really want to believe he is a man among the worst humans alive in Congress.
If you want to know who killed US housing Issa consolidated the list (sans puppeteers) in "The Role of Government Affordable Housing Policy in Creating the Global Financial Crisis of 2008." Excellent work that you can find under the carpet.
This looks like a major tug-a-war between the big boys who stole it all and the big boys who lost it all.
man, if only they would hurry up and break the damn rope.
Yep. This is akin to a Death Cage Match... of sociopaths.
You hope both parties lose as much blood as possible.
The Republicans have the 911 fraud, war on terror delusion, homeland security theatre, Afghanistan and Iraq on their hands.
The Democrats have much of the same, plus global warming and the carbon tax shell game and this healthcare mayhem.
A pox on both their houses!
You hope both parties lose as much blood as possible.
Assetman...gets my vote for line of the week....nicely done!
I recognize the congressman from the good state of anemia
I wish they would expand it to 'What % of par is the Fed paying for the $1.25T in MBS?'
Hey, if they are blowing a gasket over $62B in hidden bank bailout money I imagine $1.25T will cause some heads to explode.
Is it me imagination that as soon as ZH reveals yet another crook who seems to be hiding in the woodshed, that within a few days, the folks with subpoena power all of a sudden would like a tete with same?
SEC helps AIG hide backdoor bailouts to GS!!!!
The latest WTF?!? news to come out of the swamp that is Washington, D.C. is this tidbit of official government incompetence and opaqueness:
The SEC, working hand in glove with AIG, agreed to keep bailout terms sealed, including information on the pass thru to counter parties such as Goldman Sachs at 100 cents on the dollar. This SEC granted “confidential treatment” was agreed to last May, and a “secrecy order” (WTF is that?) will stay in place until November 2018.
“It could take until November 2018 to get the full story behind the U.S. bailout of insurance giant American International Group (AIG.N) because of an action taken last year by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In May, the SEC approved a request by AIG to keep secret an exhibit to a year-old regulatory filing that includes some of the details on the most controversial aspect of the AIG bailout: the funneling of tens of billions of dollars to big banks like Societe Generale, Goldman Sachs (GS.N), Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE) and Merrill Lynch.
The SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance, in granting AIG’s request for confidential treatment, said the “excluded information” will not be made public until Nov. 25, 2018, according to a copy of the agency’s May 22 order.
An SEC spokesman declined to comment when Reuters asked about the order.
Quite bluntly, it is astonishing that the SEC agreed to this. We are not discussing a typical SEC for confidential treatment — they receive ~1,500 if those to protect trade secrets, and grant 95% of these.
This is not one of those instances — no patents, no technological innovations or new drug molecules. Instead, this was a case of an insolvent insurer receiving 100s of billions of dollars in taxpayer monies, who then used the government’s regulatory agency to hide where the proceeds of the public went — from the same public who wrote the checks. This is the latest outrage in a series of outrages.
I’m no expert in constitutional law, but I would imagine that a President — especially one that campaigned on transparency in government – could override this shameful exercise in douchebaggery.
I continue to wonder if anyone in DC has the slightest clue WTF the they are doing. I was sick to death of the sheer willful anti-science, anti-logic ignorance of the Bush administration. I hoped that the new guys will be less overt hostile to the public, less secretive, more respectful that this is — or at least used to be — a Democracy. The stupiditiy of the Bush administration has been replaced by a new flavor of ignorance — the cluelessness of the Obama team. We might as well have given W a 3rd term, given the outrageous and embarrassing decision making we have witnessed so far.
Change we can believe? More like “4 more years.” Color me nauseous.
>
I'd be interested if a ZH friendly someone at the SEC could confirm this, and I'd be curious as to the authority of the SEC to make a required disclsoure document "secret" and under what set of cicrucmstances, who makes that decisions etc. At first blush, I 'd say it is beyond their authority, and second, let's send out the FOIA request.
I'm not an atty as you know Ned, but there is lots of legal authority here I would guess: http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/executive-order/12631.html Section 2 looks pretty wide open to me. And, if someone wants to litigate it, well, have a few zillions and lots of years as you well know.
I think the Federal Reserve Act's emergency powers provision is even more wide open.
Why hasn't anyone questioned the guys at AIG who put these deals together?
Is that too obvious or am I missing something?
Sorry to deflect a bit from topic, but we were speaking of slugs and worms were we not? In that connection this little tidbit from Glenn Greenwald on that crustacean, Paul Krugman, and the deceptively embedded nature of his usual commentary:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/01/15/sunstein/in...
The part of the article involving Krugman is located six or seven paragraphs into the piece and ought to give anyone pause as to the truly objective nature of his writing. But the main thrust of Greenwald's thinking here has to do with the chilling possibility of Obama Administration covert involvement in blogs and chatrooms so as to uncover and presumably to persecute opposition to its political programme. That's enough to justify the attention of anyone posting here, I'd say.
They are already doing it here and I, for one, am not bothered. I am already on the Blue List anyway, so what difference does it make?
CIA trolls are all over the pieces on China presented on ZeroHedge earlier today. I don't know why they don't think we can see clear through them. Sophisticated ladies and gentlemen should at least start with a fresh playbook.
It's only frightening if ZH hands over the IP address of all the bloggers that posted comments on this website.
But, knowing the Goons in D.C. they have probably backdoored all the servers used by ZH and are well aware of who traffics in and out.
The warrant being served would only be a diversionary tatic to pass the smell test.
Of course if I wake up one day and find myself being waterboarded then I hope they don't kidnap me until after the super bowl.
This question comes up every once in a while. Of course, we don't talk in great detail about the architecture behind Zero Hedge, but it is no secret that serving a warrant on Zero Hedge is sort of pointless unless it is done from the United States by letters rogatory to foreign jurisdictions, since our servers are not actually in the United States. Not only that, but the material obtained via warrant would probably be decidedly boring. We simply don't keep much. We don't even have to go to great lengths to delete log material. Our storage space is simply so dear that we just can't afford to keep much of it around. It rotates out itself quite quickly.
We also manage our own servers, rather than rely on the ISP to do it for us. Only two members of the Senior Staff have access to the servers at this point. Of course, someone could always obtain physical access to the boxes some way or another. Given the way we run them, however, we strongly suspect we would notice even a few minutes of downtime. Even if not, aside from just watching all inbound and outbound traffic to the site (you are using a privacy proxy or Tor or something, right?) what exactly is the issue? After all, unless you are posting something incredibly stupid that will attract the attention of people so concerned that they would spend large amounts of resources tasking the nation's intelligence apperatus to find you, and the state department to get local police involved to execute a warrant in a foreign jurisdiction that will result in probably no data of any real use anyhow, then you should probably be more worried about the local network administrator for your Comcast region noticing when someone, unbeknownst to you, sends a stack of kiddy porn to your inbox as a joke.
Ha ha.
What a lovely idea for a practical joke.
Marla:
I adore the way you write as well as all the little ditties and barbs and Marlaisms that come out of that brain of yours.
Then again, consider the source....
...and speaking of posting things that are incredibly stupid, read some WaPo comments any day of the week. Acid bombs thrown on the entire Capitol Hill crowd day after day.
We is down right civilized around these parts of the virtual sphere.
Intelligence breeds decorum.....or so it is alleged.
No kidding. They make outbursts around here look benignly autistic.
"We simply don't keep much. We don't even have to go to great lengths to delete log material. Our storage space is simply so dear that we just can't afford to keep much of it around. It rotates out itself quite quickly."
Sounds like the East Anglia University model of data back-up. They used it with the original data for the Mann Hockey stick graph. Fortunately, this was revealed and the hockey stick did not get stuck where the sun does not shine.
Something tells me that most on this site will handle it just fine if they do find goons at their door. Personally, I don't give a rat's ass, but then again, I don't post often. I am now however, completely in agreement with most viewpoints expressed and extremely pissed off. So goons, don't forget to get me too. With all you wonderful people, the jailhouse will be rocking, and I don't want to miss the party!
Everyone must do their Duty to counter-counterspeech. Don't let the counterspeechers get away with it - they are often lazy, and easy to spot, because they ridicule instead of attempting to reason. And they whine on and on about site credibility and "conspiracy theories have no place here".
Because the very raison d'etre of ZH is to expose cheats and murderers!
I get a bad queasy feeling whenever I read anything from Krugman. The guy just creeps me out.
He's touted as an ecomonist who just happens to be liberal. I say he's a commie who just happens to be an economist.
For anyone interested, a follow up to yesterday's Glenn Greenwald piece concerning the morally challenged Krugman and the blog spying question that appeared at his site:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/01/16/krugman/ind...
It would seem that Krugman has gotten his teat in a wringer and now is flailing about in a New York Times op ed in an attempt to defend himself. Greenwald's follow up takes all the weasel out of Krugman's defense, leaving that amoral little mouse in a twisted wreckage.
Paul Krugman is before all else a Democrat, before being an economist, before being a professor, and - for all one might be able to tell from the available evidence - perhaps even before being a husband and father, if one might even be capable of imagining being in the same bedroom with this poseur. In tangling with Greenwald, Krugman has dealt his credibility as a commentator a death blow. Can you imagine a life without Paul Krugman? With no little relief, I can.
I followed the articles sources related to the Krugman/Gruber issue and found the Greenwald's article to be pretty weak on that point.
Greenwald's primary focus; that Cass Sunstein, Obama's head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs has recently advocated infiltrating online forums is quite concerning.
The article is definitely worth the read.
Thank you.
sorry if this is a little off topic, but it is goldman related.
saw in wsj today that obama will be campaigning for coakley to save a seat in mass and i knew that name was familiar, then i remembered. remember when goldman got that slap on the wrist by state of mass ($60million fine) for their role in subprime in that state --- guess who settled w/them? that's right, Coakley. why is the press not looking into the "bribe" any further and where was the SEC --- do they not have any jurisdiction? OK, what regulator could have taken this and maybe rolled it out a la class action style to all states? also why is the press not taking this story and hollering from the rooftops??!! could hank greenberg come to the rescue as he is doing the deep dive anlysis on goldman's tru role? And, LB smugly testifying the other day on the "natural disaster" which was the financial meltdown--- despicable. article is ap picked up by :
MAY 12, 2009 Goldman Settles Subprime Inquiry
Bank's Agreement With Massachusetts Requires Relief of $60 Million
By WILLIAM M. BULKELEY
BOSTON -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc. agreed to provide about $50 million in relief to Massachusetts subprime-mortgage holders and pay an additional $10 million to the state to end an investigation of the company.
The state attorney general's office said it appears to be the first time a subprime-mortgage securitizer such as an investment bank has settled a state investigation with a payment.
Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said at a news conference that the settlement means the office won't pursue any further claims against Goldman. But she said "there are other players whose roles are intertwined, and we are looking at" them. She declined to name any of the other companies.
Associated Press
HOME FRONT: Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, shown at a news conference in January, settled with Goldman.
Goldman sold or securitized mortgages, but many of Wall Street's biggest firms, including Merrill Lynch & Co. (now part of Bank of America Corp.) and Morgan Stanley, both sold loans to consumers and then packaged them for sale to big investors.
Ms. Coakley said the settlement didn't involve court action and Goldman didn't acknowledge wrongdoing. She didn't specify any potential legal violations by the firm. Goldman "wasn't directly involved in loan originations," she said. "They purchased loans. They facilitated companies that made loans."
Goldman said it is "pleased to have resolved this matter."
The state said the accord grew out of its investigation of subprime lenders. It said it started looking into Goldman last year after getting an injunction barring Fremont Investment & Loan, a California subprime lender, from foreclosing on borrowers in Massachusetts. The state had argued that Fremont loans were "unfair and deceptive" and violated the state Consumer Protection Act because the lender knew the borrower wouldn't be able to pay and would face foreclosure. James Carroll, a lawyer in the case who represented Fremont Investment, then a unit of Fremont General Corp., wasn't available for comment.
Ms. Coakley said the Fremont case led investigators to Litton Loan Servicing LP, a Goldman unit that services loans for a number of mortgage companies. It also led them to look at securitizers such as Goldman, which bundled the loans and resold them to investors.
Bloomberg News
Goldman Sachs
Ms. Coakley said her office is studying whether securitizers "facilitated the origination of 'unfair' loans" and failed to correct inaccurate information in reports to potential investors, among other issues.
Under the agreement, Goldman will restructure loans for borrowers whose loans it holds. The state said there are about 714 such borrowers. Borrowers with first mortgages could see their principal reduced 25% to 35%, and those with second mortgages held by Goldman could see principal reduced 50% or more.
Delinquent borrowers will be required to make a "reasonable monthly payment" while trying to sell or refinance their homes. If they can't sell within six months, Goldman must reduce the principal owed. For several thousand Massachusetts homeowners whose loans are serviced by Litton, Goldman will help them try to find refinancing.
Write to William M. Bulkeley at bill.bulkeley@wsj.com
Way to connect the dots Anon.
+1
"Goldman will help them try to find refinancing." -oooh now that's tough
Dear Mr. Sunstein:
That free speech thingee in the Constitution sure is a fucker, isn't it?
Please tell that little asshole Rahm I said "fuck you".
PS..tell Barry he can still meet with a few of us ZHers who can explain to him just how Bernanke, Summers, Geithner and the bank gang are fucking the USA over. We can help as long as larry promises not to throw diet coke cans at us when we show that he is not the smartest guy in the room. please send an invite to tips at zerohedge dot com
Yes, Deadhead I read ZH all the time and the absolute best idea that I have heard yet. You, CD, Trav777 and a select few more could enlighten our President to the absolute FRAUD taking place right under his nose. I still think deep down inside that there is a good and just person in there. My bet is he is so shielded from REALITY that he has no clue as to the TRUTH.
Do you guys honestly believe that Barry doesn't know what's going on? Honestly?
suteibu...i like obama, just so you have that as a frame of reference. I don't really think he fully understands what is going on....he's been a law professor most of his life and i think his understanding of economics and finance is limited.
we know the crew he has surrounded himself with and we know what they are doing. sure, obama has also heard from others such as volcker, stiglitz, krugman and i'm sure others. we know which side Obama has gone with and their approach is dangerous in many regards.
i think the bottom line is that the bernanke, summers, geithner crew has shown him the pictures of bank runs from the depression combined with all the computer models of worst case scenarios based on their postulation that the world ends if the tbtf group does not get their way. i think they have scared the shit out of the guy and as we know, politicians follow the least path of resistance and kick the can down the road. add to that a couple of hundred other things that obama has going on (and I think the national security issues are likely very, very intense) and it is easy to see why he has left the big picture to summers and bernanke.
i honestly don't think the guy gets the whole picture on the danger posed by the Fed, wall st, banking oligarchy and what they are up to and where their actions are taking this country.
Agreed that he probably doesnt see the big picture, and has no experience business-wise...or maybe Obama sees historical realities in Jackson, Lincoln, Garfield, Kennedy and Reagan...who challenged the status quo...and only 2 of 5 survived...personally I imagine part of him would love to take down TPTB (he is a quasi-marxist after all), but maybe he likes the high society life and, well, life itself, more...
The man is probably experiencing some serious cognitive dissonance...or, if I am wrong, then he is yet another straw man laughing on the way to the bank.
I think he gets it. I think he learns very quickly. The basic things you learn in law school are (1) it's all a game and (2) do anything for your client. I think he understands who his clients are. I think he understands history, math and basic economics, including his own. Who has he surrounded himself with? Who does he meet with secretly and then fight that disclosure? Does he make the very same "national security" arguments in court? Even his twisted healthcare effort began with closed door promises to insurance and drug industry pimps. He's more pinnochio than real puppet, nose included.
Yeah, the optimism derived in thinking, "if they just gave me 10 minutes with O I could make him see" is off kilter.
Then what?
"Hey, O, I just want you to know...hey, um, can you tell Rahm to go get us some burgers...this is pretty important. Okay, here it is: we need to arrest the bankers. Whaddya think!"
Then what? Is O really going to break ranks? And if he does then what? We are waaaaaaay past the point of no return.
Without going into detail I like O a lot as well - in fact W looked like he would have been a lot of fun at a BBQ as well. I just wish O didn't have to stick to driveling speeches written by guys that did their internship for the Federal Reserve PR department. Imagine if they did a Thursday night beer summit with the Prez - bring in a mix of celebrities and people right of the street - just to talk about stuff.
But when executive order after executive order comes out, encricling people that just want to be left alone, I say treason. The Commander-in-Chief no longer protects his People.
Seek... I hear that word alot. What does seek mean? It means, Thinking of doing. The SEC " Seeks" to crack down on alot of shit ,But they don't "Do". " Seek" means shit. Just fucking "Do". Do means taking action.
Seek... I hear that word alot. What does seek mean? It means, Thinking of doing. The SEC " Seeks" to crack down on alot of shit ,But they don't "Do". " Seek" means shit. Just fucking "Do". Do means taking action.
Hell yeah Issa!!!!!!!
THIS is cool....
The next question is THIS....
Suppose there is some form of wrong doing....
Who is going to pay the money and how....
To me...this is very CLEAR....
Those that got 100 cents on the dollar...
Need to pay back an amount equal to having
received 25 cents on the dollar....
And several people need to go to JAIL....
................................
Next....
Re-structure the exchanges...sepaprate the banks from securities....and enhance the RETAIL exchange worldwide....
can someone please ask blanfein if anyone at goldm,an -or any of these other firms- were shorting AIG stock as a "hedge" or outrighyt trade to the counter party risk or vs their own mtg positions. I really want to know!! My bet is the answer is yes.
I don't doubt, they naked shorted aig, and lehman, and wamu, and bear stearns etc. etc.
well some idiot congressman can make a name for himself by asking. Mr Blankenstein, is it true that you were so convinced that the AIG strategy of selling protection on AAA cdo was doomed to fail that you shorted the stock of your client? If so, and you were hedged for your risk, why did little Timmy pay you 100c on the dollar ? Seems lije you may have made out both ways?
Watch
Elizabeth Warren: Behind the TARP Bailout
http://tinyurl.com/ybgonte
Is Barack Obama Really In Charge?
The real question as I see it is, can Obama take on Wall Street? The question has been raised many times as to who is really in charge - in control - of our government. The answer most often given is that the powerful bankers - to include The Federal Reserve - are the ones truly in charge and by what we have witnessed this past year, that answer more and more becomes reality.
http://tinyurl.com/y8f4tys
I applaud Congressman Issa and any member of Congress who pursues a Congressional investigation of the ringleaders of the greatest financial crimes in U.S. history. Issa is off to a great start by pursuing investigation of Hank "the mole in U.S. Treasury" Paulson, Ben "the bag man" Bernanke, and Stephen "the mole in NY Fed" Friedman" a.k.a Stephen "no conflict of interest" Friedman".
Yes, there are many more ringleaders to pursue, but you have to start somewhere. What a marvelous start it would be for Congress to investigate this trio of teflon dons. What a rich lode of cascading prosecutions may follow from grilling these ringleaders.
Another 800 pound-person-of-interest for Congress to check as part of AIG investigation is William Dudley, NY Fed President, former Goldman Sachs executive, and Geithner accomplice at NY Fed.
Message to Congress - The public is fed up with coddling the white collars criminals responsible for the greatest financial crimes in U.S. history. Conduct hard, tough-as-nails investigations to uncover the criminals. Take off the kid gloves, and hit these criminals with the iron fist of justice.
Tyler, Marla - let's get together the "List of 100 Questions" that need to be answered under oath. Hey, it might be futile, but it would be gratifying to send them in a a group, rather than emailed by each of us. Did we give up after Hitler bombed Pearl Harbor?
I am unimpressed by the questions in general, and assume the fix is in unless they ask what needs to be asked. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt since they are politicians, not investigators, or forensic accountants, or cops. It would be tragic if this commission failed out of simple ignorance. "Statements" from Paulson and Bernanke are insufficient - they must be be under oath, and not of the "Do you think everything you did was proper?" or " if you had the chance to do it again, what would you do differently?" variety. Asking for opinions is non-productive until we get to the stage that asks "now that we understand what happened here, what measures should we take to protect against it occurring again?" Before that, might as well as them about their summer vacation. If they answer the right questions under oath, so be it.
But in that vein, every lawyer knows you don't ask a question at trial that you don't know the answer to. Gather and ascertain as many facts as you can FIRST: who, what, when, where and how. Call in the subordinates first for questioning. Then ascertain motive and parties affected/benefited. That requires a great deal of advance work, in order to know what questions to ask and unmask the truth. So calling for "statements" right now, as an investigative tool, might be the right answer, if the work is done, and then the questions are asked under oath. (Any such statements will only be the carefully crafted, parsed word-by-word handiwork of lawyers anyway, and not deviate from the official story - a very, very thin story line - in any way, so one wonders why you'd bother.) I posted recently about the September 18, 2008 "money market run", an event that is clearly one crying out for investigation as it makes no sense, and was used as a fear-mongering club to bludgeon Congress with, along with the AIG bailout. I want to hear step-by-step: who did what and when, etc. I don't trust the elites or elected officials, I want to hear the facts and I will draw my conclusions.
Wouldn't it be a relief if all of this can be explained? And if so, why not just go ahead and do it? I think most Americans were satisfied with most aspects of the 911 Commission, and I personally believe after reading several books that Oswald really did act alone (my sole remaining question on that being why anyone would let Kennedy's security guard down on a tour through a hugely hostile South in the early 60s - that is a question that has not been answered, but I digress). Why does everyone tiptoe around putting these guys under oath, and asking the questions?
Ned - Excellent, constructive idea...giving Congress the tough questions that need to be answered under oath by the Fed, Treasury and Wall Street. These Congressional investigations need to go beyond the "lessons learned" red-herring to the "crimes learned and passed to prosecutors" action.
+1
Make sure this is one of the questions. ROFL!
Although this reminds me of the questions for GS:
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/goldman-sachs-responds-zero-hedge-0
So we publish this list ZH inspired and crowdsourced questions so that everyone knows ahead of time AND we book the room for the whole day with Blankfein - we're buying lunch; you're not going anywhere. Then the next day with whomever else we want. All questions must be answered - no, "we'll get back to you on that one".
I like Jesse's take:
And one more thing: make sure Ron Paul is asking the questions. Everyone else is compromised.