Banking Law

If you ever get really, really bored, yet perhaps are having trouble falling asleep, you can always start reading the 662 pages of the FCIC majority report on the causes of the financial crisis and the two dissents. Say what you want about Peter Wallison (and the liberal blogs have already launched into a typical round of ad hominem attacks), he starts out his dissent asking the question that many of us have asked since the Democrats in Congress steamrolled Dodd-Frank through the sausage mill last year: why did Congress bother to authorize the report at all?

Congress and the President acted without seeking to understand the true causes of the wrenching events of 2008, perhaps following the precepts of the President's chief of staff--"Never let a good crisis go to waste."

Not that anyone will ever agree on the "true causes." That's evident from the parallel universes which the six Democrats and three of the Republicans on the FCIC inhabit, and the solitary asteroid where Mr. Wallison dwells. Chris Whelan sums it up best, in an earthy tone I admire.

"Unfortunately, the politics now are such that this has turned into a pissing match between the New Dealers and the conservatives," says Chris Whelan, a risk management expert and former Wall Street investment banker.

Don't look down now, but your leg's wet, Hoss.

The Heritage Foundation's David John provides some fitting last words.

"I don't want to denigrate the very hard work and obvious dedication of the commissioners," says David John, a financial markets expert at the Heritage Foundation. "But this is too late, really, to impact this discussion."

[...]

"It's not a study by financial professionals. It's not a study by academics. It's a study by people who went into it with either an experienced background or a preconceived notion," John says.

Mostly the latter, I'm afraid. As I predicted in July 2009, the task of the "truth commission" was all about "assigning blame for the current mess in strict accordance with political ideology." Our political class is nothing but a pack of pure Pontius Pilates. "What is truth?"