of corse there wont be a new Pecora commission (0.00 / 0)

Obama and the democratic leadership already threw its weight behind wall street, with the bailout and the PPP. the dice have been cast. obama picked summers and geitner not krugman and baker. its over, he not going to touch banking. he doesn't stand between wall street and the pitchforks, he just stand with wall street, its that simple.

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by: Edgar Box @ Wed Jul 01, 2009 at 20:08:46 PM CDT

Eliot Spitzer (4.00 / 1)

should be on that commission.

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by: joanneleon @ Wed Jul 01, 2009 at 20:17:01 PM CDT

Yes (4.00 / 1)

Great idea. Let's stick someone best known for being a hypocritical idiot on a important commission like that. Great idea.  

John McCain: Beacuse lobbyists should have more power

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by: Populista @ Wed Jul 01, 2009 at 20:22:28 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

There aren't many politicians that aren't ... (4.00 / 2)

hypocritical idiots ... it's not like you can appoint Bernie Sanders to every commission

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by: Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle @ Wed Jul 01, 2009 at 21:38:21 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Spitzer (4.00 / 5)

Went after Wall Street successfully and paid dearly.  Those crppks spent $2.1 million of their own money to hire privaste detectives to get Spitzer.

Spitzer is cleaner than Vitter who is still in the Senate.  Wall Street had no revenge motive against Vitter.

Btw, Wall Street is made up of rich, well connected fools.  The fewer inside deals and the more open Wall Street is the more Main Street will be willing to invest rather than in real estate, businesses, etc.  They are not dumb but ...

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by: David Kowalski @ Wed Jul 01, 2009 at 22:29:20 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

It's obvious .. (0.00 / 0)

President Obama told Wall Street CEOs awhile back that he was the only thing that stood between them and pitchforks.

Obama knows what the problem is ... so why isn't he doing something about it? ... I am sure he knows that real health care reform isn't going to come from kissing the insurance companies' asses either(like a lot of Congress seemingly wants to do)

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by: Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle @ Wed Jul 01, 2009 at 21:40:46 PM CDT

There's a lot of facts already out (0.00 / 0)

Matt Taibi's current piece in Rolling Stone about Goldman Sachs really scandalous behavior in the past few decades covers much of what I would expect to learn from a new Pecora commission. Same for other articles in the past nine months.

I hope progressives will be smart and pressure the media to follow up on the facts, to confirm them, and demand that any commission use their subpoena power to compel the truth. It is hard to hide with so much data available, even if the major media buries this story so far (the media most Americans get their news from).

Given Taibi's latest piece, if there are no Goldman alumni on the commission, then it has a chance to succeed. But there are so many of them everywhere in government, according to Taibi, that a fair airing is almost impossible if they weasel their way on to this commission.

Thanks for the update, Mike.

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by: TSlavin @ Wed Jul 01, 2009 at 21:56:38 PM CDT

A new Pecora Commission is a fig leaf and a crappy one at that. Just pathetic. (4.00 / 2)

When ever corrupt pols need to find a way of distancing themselves from both a problem and the corrupt pseudo-solutions they want... they appoint a commission. A commission takes place behind closed doors. It's largely off the record. The members will be sufficiently conflicted to guarantee a specific outcome. Hearings will be a joke. Just insulting agitprop. Want to avoid democratic processes? Hire a bleeding commission!

9/11 Commission anyone?

We already know what happened and why. Congress could have hearings, like the Watergate hearings and air this out in real terms and create real legislation. But that's not going to happen is it? Of course not! That would mean Pelosi and Reid doing their jobs in the public interest and that's simply out of the question!

Dean, Kuttner, Krugman, Johnson, Roubini and many others have all been busily explaining to anyone who would listen, along with some really good financial types (Ritholtz, CR and many others), what is wrong and why it all happened... for at least two years now. We know all the W's on this stuff by now. If congress doesn't, it's only because of willful ignorance due to the fact they've been so busy being bought by Wall Street all this time. Ditto for the WH at this point... totally captured.

When their "paycheck" depends on them not seeing something, they're not going to see it, right? Byron Dorgan saw this coming back in '98, does he see the need for a commission?

So this commission thing is little more than a running joke at this point.

The political class is making a bet that this will all blow over in time for Obama's next election. They are betting that people will simply lie down and take it like good little lemmings. Who knows, they may be right.

We're not looking at another year of economic pain, Mike. We're talking many years of pain. The die has been cast at this point. Americans are going to have to get used to a major decline in their standard of living--of course, that's the whole point of our current policy regime. If health care "reform" turns out to be as lame as it looks right now, this will only be that much worse and a lot of people will suffer horribly as a result.

I don't think the WH cares one whit about pitchforks. Their hubris is striking in this respect. Their lack of common decency is merely depressing.


When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.

-- Frederic Bastiat, "The Law", 1850

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by: Emocrat @ Wed Jul 01, 2009 at 22:03:20 PM CDT

Thompson (0.00 / 0)

Why in the world are they floating Fred Thompson's name for the proposed commission? This guy will sleep through the whole proceedings (that is if he manages to find them).

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by: rfirgens @ Thu Jul 02, 2009 at 10:13:33 AM CDT