Pecora Commission

Wall Street: Guilty As Charged

Richard Eskow — Mon, 16 May 2011 20:02:14 -0400

In a piece called "Wall Street: Not Guilty," financial columnist Roger Lowenstein attempts to defend Wall Street against allegations that it's a viper's nest of rampant criminality. His mischaracterization, mockery, and vague suggestions of McCarthyism are strident, flat, and fail to get the job done. But Lowenstein's piece is well worth reading, if only as a case study in the moral and cognitive blindness that's reached epidemic proportions in influential Washington and Wall Street circles.

Lowenstein shows us how people who are undoubtedly thoughtful and ethically-minded in their personal lives can lose their way when confronted with complex moral and legal issues, especially ones involving people they know personally. And his misdirection and vituperation suggests how unsettled they become when their worldview is challenged.

It's a shame. The analytical and moral flaws in Lowenstein's piece obscure some of the very sound points he makes about the wrongheadedness of our country's financial culture, a topic that deserves more thoughtful discussion. Without a clear rebuttal, this wrongheaded view is likely to become tomorrow's conventional wisdom.

Hooray for Hollywood

Lowenstein unselfconsciously mocks "armchair prosecutors" even as he appoints himself armchair defense counsel, armchair judge, and armchair granter of blanket amnesty. His basic argument is that "risk-taking and stupidity aren't criminal," as the subheading to his piece puts it; that there may have been crimes committed, but they're minor and incidental to the financial collapse; that no greater purpose is served by a massive investigation of Wall Street; and that people who argue otherwise are angry, misguided, self-righteous persecutors.

Let's start with that last point first. One wonders how much of Lowenstein's extensive use of class-baiting, right-wing symbolism is deliberate and how much is unconscious. I don't know his politics, but reading this piece is like spending an unpleasant holiday dinner listening to your sloshed Tea Party uncle.  He opens with Charles Ferguson's comments at the Academy Awards, where Ferguson noted that nobody has gone to jail since the financial crisis, then adds mockingly: "How many dinner party guests have debated the trillion-dollar question: When will a Wall Street executive be sent to jail?"

Hollywood. Dinner-party guests. Get it? In Lowenstein's world, bank crimes are only of interest to wealthy lefties who sit around judging others while they're sipping frosty cocktails and nibbling on hors d'oeuvres. That will come as a surprise to the seven million people who lost their jobs as a result of the financial crisis.

Straw Men Marching in Formation

Lowenstein then misrepresents the views of people he's already characterized as a dinner-party lynch mob, claiming they believe the following: "that people who take big risks should be subject to a criminal investigation; that executives of large financial firms should be criminal suspects after a crash; that public revulsion indicates likely culpability; that it is inconceivable ... that people could lose so much money absent a conspiracy; and that Wall Street bears collective guilt for which a large part of it should be incarcerated."

Of course, he can't cite anybody except Bernie Madoff who's actually made these claims - because they don't exist. Nobody believes that "people who take big risks should be subject to criminal investigation" - although many believe their banks should be broken up if they're a threat to the system, so we don't have to rescue them again. And nobody believes "executives of large financial firms should be criminal suspects after a crash" - unless there's evidence they've committed crimes, and there's plenty. Joe Nocera, Matt Taibbi, and the others named by Lowenstein simply want to see that evidence used in prosecutions.

"Public revulsion indicates likely culpability"?? Again, who ever said that? If public revulsion suggested culpability,every singer who's ever used Auto-Tune would be under investigation right now.

Perhaps Lowenstein's worst subliminal cue is the phrase "collective guilt," most commonly used when discussing the crimes of Germany under the Nazis. And the historian Richard Hofstadter must be spinning in his grave as Lowenstein distorts his work to slur bank critics with the concept of "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," a term Hofstadter applied to McCarthyism and conspiracy theories in general. Writes Lowenstein:

The paranoid style, as Hofstadter defined it, has as much to do with "style" as paranoia--it's about "the way in which ideas are believed [more] than with the truth or falsity of their content" ... We could follow this strain through the dismal historiography of JFK assassination buffs to the beliefs that Washington was implicated in Pearl Harbor and Sept. 11, to the anti-federalist fantasies of the far right.

Got that? If you think Wall Street crimes should be prosecuted, you're like the people who believe that the United States sank the USS Arizona to start World War II or blew up the World Trade Center on 9/11.

We need a historian in the Bloomberg newsroom ... stat!

Adds Lowenstein: "... (F)inancial history is replete with bubbles and crashes. No person--no criminal, that is--caused the Great Depression."

I don't know which is worse: Lowenstein's ad hominem attacks or his apparent lack of grounding in financial history. While no single person, criminal or otherwise, caused the Great Depression, the fraudulent actions of a number of people contributed to it. As a result of the Pecora Commission hearings that followed those acts were made illegal, a regulatory framework was created, and some of the bankers subpoenad by Pecora were "scared straight" for a long time.

Recessions, bubbles, and crashes aren't acts of God or nature. They're caused by human beings - and often by fraud.

The Fifth Estate Bubble

Of course, it's hard to make an accurate judgement about Wall Street's crimes when our information comes from journalists biased in its favor.

Consider JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. On Dimon's watch JPM conducted a bribery operation in Jefferson County, Alabama and sold unregistered securities in Florida. It was forced to give up three-quarters of a billion dollars to settle the bribery charges, and to set aside another $2.3 billion to settle possible future lawsuits. Reports suggest it ran a foreclosure mill run by "Burger King kids." It's facing multiple lawsuits for allegedly manipulating the price of silver, is reportedly being probed by several Federal agencies for suspicious trading activities in precious metals, and has been accused of covering up Bernie Madoff's crimes.

The kindest interpretation is that Dimon has failed to root out a culture of corruption in his own organization. And yet he was the subject of a fawning profile in the New York Times, one which repeatedly painted him as the talented and noble victim of persecution by unfair and mean-spirited critics. The author of that profile?

You probably guessed it: Roger Lowenstein.

Closing Arguments

As to Lowenstein's key points:

"Risk taking and stupidity aren't criminal": That's true as far as it goes - which isn't very far. Risk-taking and stupidity by the big banks were probably the largest factor leading up to the crisis, undertaken in the almost certain knowledge that they'd be bailed out if things went wrong. That's immoral - and it didn't occur in a vacuum. Bankers spent decades working to repeal Glass-Steagall, allowing the expansion of "too big to fail" banks into riskier business areas. They worked equally hard to lift the regulations which prevented exactly the sorts of actions that led to the collapse of 2008.

What's more, "risk taking and stupidity" can become criminal. Lowenstein's dismissive of Lehman Brothers and "Repo 105," an accounting deception which hid more than $50 million in debt. That may well be a crime. And the public record on executives in AIG's Financial Products Group is staggering. Memos and other materials seem to overwhelmingly suggest that executives knowingly made false statements on investor calls. They had been forced to hire outside auditors to settle previous SEC suits, then refused to allow those auditors to see the books - after which they appeared to tell investors that those auditors had seen the books.

Lowenstein argues that even if Lehman CEO Richard Fuld committed crimes with Repo 105 (his hypothetical, not mine) their effect on the crash was "trivial." Of itself, that's true. But the indictment of Richard Fuld would be anything but trivial: It would send shock waves across Wall Street and have an enormous deterrent effect. In fact, the financial world as we know it would change forever.

When Al Capone was indicted on tax evasion the offense was 'trivial' too. But the effect on the underworld was profound.

"The claim that [the financial crisis] was 'caused by financial fraud' is debatable, but the weight of the evidence is strongly against it. ..." It requires a very narrow definition of 'fraud' to make this claim. Lowenstein's right that the greatest single contributor to the financial collapse was the housing bubble. But America's biggest financial institutions concealed the extent of their risky investment in that bubble, and there's widespread evidence that they fueled that bubble for its own purposes.

What's more, banks across the country encouraged people to borrow more than their houses were worth by providing artificially inflated appraisals of their value. The use of crooked appraisers may constitute consumer fraud. Banks then bundled and sold these inflated loans to investors as mortgage-backed securities, while shorting those securities at the same time, which was fraudulent and may or may not have been illegal.

America's Most Wanted

And the list of crimes doesn't stop there. All of our largest banks have pleaded guilty to a number of criminal acts, for which they were 'punished' with settlements paid by shareholders instead of lawbreaking executives. It's quite a rap sheet: Wells Fargo laundered drug money for the Mexican cartels. GE Capital repeatedly committed investor stock fraud (while its parent bribed overseas governments and defrauded the US government). There's overwhelming evidence that all of our largest banks systematically engaged in the filing of false documents to local courts in foreclosure hearings, which is perjury. And Goldman Sachs ... don't get me started.

And there's Dimon's JPMorgan Chase, of course.

And yet as far as anyone knows, no senior executive's ever been investigated, Even if there's no evidence they were directly involved in crimes, they may still be culpable under the 'Lucky Luciano principle if they systematically told their employees they 'didn't want to know' how a job was done.

But nobody has even asked to see their email records or visitor logs. They still come and go in the highest corridors of Washington, and receive fawning coverage from reporters like Lowenstein, to whom they pour out their bitterness about criticism to reporters with a sympathetic ear. Worse, they're free to engage in risky, stupid, or criminal behavior, secure in the knowledge that they'll never be held responsible for their own actions.

Even if some of these crimes didn't lead to the financial crisis, the fact that they've gone unpunished contributes to Wall Street's pervasive culture of criminality. So do pieces like Lowenstein's. That leaves us all at risk for future crises, great and small. What's more, it's immoral, a perversion of justice.

Lowenstein's apologia changes nothing. Wall Street is still guilty as charged.

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This post was produced as part of the Curbing Wall Street project.

In the Dark: A Good Prosecutor Type Would've Pinned Greenspan Down

Richard Eskow — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 15:51:13 -0400

Alan Greenspan's testimony before the Angelides Commission certainly provided a target-rich environment, as they say in the Pentagon. Unfortunately the Commission missed all its targets, leaving the American public as undefended from financial depradation and ruin as it was before the hearing began. It was almost anticlimactic when the power failed during the final fifteen minutes of Greenspan's appearance. The light had left the room long before then.

The morning's takeaway was this: The American people deserve a prosecutor to get to the bottom of this financial mess. They need someone who will hold the Alan Greenspans of the world accountable and force them to stop evading questions and avoiding responsibility. This Commission was not prosecutorial today. It was Senatorial - and that's not a compliment.

You know what else would help? A narrative.

The headline-grabber statement was probably Greenspan's comment that "I was right 70% of the time and wrong 30% of the time," which is in his estimation a good performance. Really? That's a D+, or at best a C-. The question should have been asked: Are you really proud of your "D" performance, Mr. Chairman?

The other stunner of a comment was this one: We need financial innovation, said Greenspan, but "all innovation, by its nature, is unforecastable." Greenspan's solution is to increase capital requirements and fix them permanently. In effect, he's claiming that it's always going to be the Wild West. Let the shootouts keep happening, but set aside some money for the coffins.

Here's another outrageous one: People think the Federal Reserve is independent, said Greenspan, but in reality "we are a creature of the Congress." Greenspan argued that politicians told him what to do and he did it. He shouldn't be allowed to make statements like that without serious cross-examination.

The atmosphere in the room before the hearing was slack, almost listless, as if the Commissioners and the attendees knew in advance that nothing decisive was going to happen. And that's a shame because, underneath all the mythmaking and legend, Greenspan's performance wasn't that good. His testimony was filled with contradictions, vague assertions,and easily rebuttable statements. Yet there was almost no follow-up, not identification and pursuit of his contradictions or his more wild assertions.

The commission, whose official name is the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (or FCIC), was supposedly modeled on the Pecora Commission that investigated the crash of 1929. But that commission's questioning was primarily conducted by a single individual, a former New York assistant district attorney named Ferdinand Pecora. A good prosecutor would have had a field day with Greenspan, and that's exactly what the American public needs.

As predicted, Greenspan filubustered as much as he could. He dodged questions, changed the subject, and rambled until he was either cut off (or not) by his questioner, and deployed rhetorical decoys over and over, from "that's a good question" to "you're not going to get anything done by shuffling chairs." They failed to pin him down, even though he was there to be had.

Here's what Greenspan's saying, and it's as farfetched as it sounds: The Cold War drove down mortgage rates. Predatory lending and reckless, unregulated speculation had nothing to do with the crisis - it was the Russians. Crises cannot be predicted (although he says a regulator's role is preventive; nobody called him on that contradiction.)We need all these complicated, Rube Goldberg-esque financial products (or gimmicks) because today's "division of labor" is so complicated. (Maybe if we got rid of all those non-productive financial "laborers" it would get simpler.)

Overall, he's saying that the world has become so complicated that regulators can't possibly predict disasters. All we can do is raise enough capital to pay for them. If you buy that, I have a few mortgage-backed securities to sell you.

The other narrative in the room was that of the Republican ideologues on the Commission (you didn't need to know who they were in advance; you could tell as soon as they began speaking). They were pushing the false but easy-to-grasp notion that "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and subprimes are to blame." That's a nifty twofer that allows them to simultaneously slam government action and, by implication, lower-income families, and Greenspan played to their narrative, too.

The ones who understand the problem and what needs to be done -- a group that includes Phil Angelides, Heather Murren, and unsung financial hero Brooksley Born - didn't present a counter-narrative. More importantly, they didn't provide the kind of prosecutorial questioning that would have brought Greenspan's evasive and self-contradictory statements to light.

They tried. Angelides asked some tough questions, but ran out of time. Born pointed out that Greenspan opposed the regulation of of over-the-counter derivatives that have been trading at multi-trillion dollar volumes without any regulations whatsoever - thanks in large part to Greenspan's resistance to regluation. When she asked Greenspan if these derivatives played any role in the crisis, he essentially refused to answer. "In the beginning," he said, these products "were a very small part of overall volume."

A prosecutor would have stepped in and said "we're not talking about the beginning, we're talking about the last ten to fifteen years." But Greenspan meandered on, talking about the early days and then changing the subject to AIG. "It is correct," he said, that (AIG's) activity in selling CDS was the proximate cause of their collapse. But ... they could just as easily gotten into the same trouble selling insurance instruments."

But, as Born attempted to point out, insurance is regulated. She tried to pin him down on ideology, too,quoting him as saying he is "an outlier in (his) libertarian opposition ... to regulation" and asking him if his influence as a "respected sage" led to too much deregulation. But then she made a mistake a prosecutor wouldn't, mixing one tough question with another: "You've argued that the role of supervision is preventive, but the Federal Reserve failed to prevent the housing bubble, the predatory lending scandal ... failed to prevent banks from becoming too big to fail."

The mixing of questions - probably made necessary by time limits and format - allowed Greenspan to skate away on both points. It's unfair to single out the admirable Ms. Born, whose performance was actually one of the best of the morning. The format itself was a major flaw, with limited questioning from a constantly changing list of inquisitors.

That let Greenspan get away with murder: He would avoid some questions by insisting he doesn't like to "look back," then would avoid others by giving lengthy soliloquies on the days when derivatives were "a nominal 1%" of the market. At times he would defend himself by saying "I warned of the consequences ... in 2004," then say that crises can't be predicted. He would say we understood the problems and issued "guidelines," then argue that we didn't and couldn't have known about the problem until Fannie and Freddie figures were released in December 2009. It would take one good questioner, working for the entire morning, to bring these evasions and inconsistencies to light.

Greenspan placed an inordinant amount of faith in the principles of risk management, and particular in the computing power of Risk Management information systems. But, as one who has worked in that field, it was impossible to forget the old adage: Garbage in, garbage out. During the last few minutes of testimony, when Greenspan's voice became nearly inaudible, it sounded as if the former Fed chair was arguing that regulation didn't fail - risk management did.

But risk management is a private sector function. The topic of the day was the role of regulators in general, and Mr. Greenspan's epic failures in particular. The fact that he was able to close his testimony by (apparently) shifting responsibility back to the very corporations he was supposed to be monitoring tells us everything we need to know. A good prosecutor would have had a follow-up question or two.

Instead, we were left in the dark.

Humanity Amid The Wall Street Sociopaths

Robert Johnson — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 15:37:35 -0500

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission hearings began belatedly this morning. Carrying a structure of decision-making that appears to be designed to make it hard to get things done, Chairman Phil Angelides has a gargantuan task before him.

The first session, which is a beginning, did have moments of import and Angelides acquitted himself well when he reminded Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein of the fact that there were people on the other side of those losses, particularly police pension funds, when Goldman appears to have sold the "sophisticated investors" representing them some toxic mortgage paper.

What I find important about that moment is that Angelides' questions serve to restore some humanity to this process that hides behind complexity and mathematics and screens while denying human consequences. The sociopath nature of Wall Street, seeing its actions as disembodied from the rest of the economy and society, has to be shattered. These financial professionals have failed as experts and custodians of the well-being and future of the nation.

Another noteworthy element of the theater was the relative absence of Jamie Dimon. He was hardly questioned or pressed. Blankfein has been cast as the feisty defender of Wall Street practice.

The example of Goldman Sachs' conflict of interest between the proprietary account of the firm and the well-being of its customers is certainly not unique to that firm. It would serve us all if the FCIC were to dig deeper into how that conflict operates.

The other highlight was Blankfien's declaration that he was never asked to take less than 100 cents on the dollar on AIG settlements when the giant insurance firm lumbered up to the bailout table.

Most assuredly, future hearings will delve into the interface between private firms and the government authorities at the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department. One only hopes that the FCIC can get to the bottom of this relationship before we pass financial reform legislation in the Congress in the coming year.

Restoring Trust in Our Economic System & The Institutions of Our Democracy

Bruce Judson — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:19:28 -0400

This is the first article in a three-part series on the FCIC. The article originally appeared at the New Deal 2.0 project, where I am a Braintruster.

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC), which started work last week, will have a significant impact on the health of our democracy. When the FCIC completes its efforts, we will either be stronger or weaker as a nation. There is no middle ground. We must fervently hope that the Commission rises to this challenge with a comprehensive investigation.

The work of the Commission is important for two reasons. First, by openly educating the public about the causes of the financial crisis it will pave the way for reform. Existing interests will inevitably resist change. Reform becomes far easier when its advocates can point to a roadmap of specific problems that must be addressed. This is one of the central lessons of the Pecora Commission’s work. By clearly demonstrating why the Great Crash occurred, the Pecora Commission created the rationale, and the necessary public support, for legislative initiatives such as the Glass-Steagall Act, and the establishment of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Second, America is becoming an angry nation, with diminished faith in its institutions. There is a growing sense among all but the wealthiest Americans that “the game is rigged” against them. The public perception of the work of the FCIC will inevitably affect, for better or worse, our basic level of trust in the nation’s democratic system.

In Trust, Francis Fukuyama demonstrated that societies with high trust are vibrant and productive, because individuals trust their interests will be protected. In the absence of trust, rigid work rules, contracts, litigation, and a range of other costs are created as everyone in the economy attempts to protect him or herself. In 1972, Kenneth Arrow, the Nobel laureate wrote, “Virtually every commercial transaction has within itself an element of trust.”

As discussed in It Could Happen Here,trust is a central element of a healthy democracy as well as a healthy economy. When trust disappears, people become increasingly cynical. As this cynicism grows, citizens become disengaged from the political process: There’s no point in voting or working toward any civic-related goal if you cynically believe nothing will ever change. At the same time, government becomes increasing ineffective as people no longer believe elected officials will fulfill their responsibilities or promises. As a result, a cynical society can quickly become a paralyzed society.

Ultimately, cynicism can also play a role in shifting a paralyzed society toward actual political instability. One of the causes of the collapse of the Soviet Union was the extraordinarily high degree of cynicism toward the government. Two centuries earlier, the government of Louis XVI was almost universally mistrusted before the French Revolution. In part, because cynicism has never been a central aspect of the American character, we have always regarded our nation as immune to such extreme circumstances.

I fear that one result of the development of our trader nation culture—which encourages us to see our participation in the economy with a “heads I win tales you lose attitude”-- is unhealthy, growing cynicism. Last week, I wrote an article that appeared on my blog, The Business Insider,, the New Deal 2.0 blog, in The Huffington Post and elsewhere. The article critiqued the data and conclusions of a front page Wall Street Journal article that inaccurately down-played the extent of economic inequality. The article attracted hundreds of comments across the Web. The vast majority of these comments effectively said: What else did you expect? I discovered that cynicism is the reigning sentiment.

We are not becoming a nation of whiners. Far worse, we are becoming a nation of cynics.

To date, the growing cynicism of the American public is sadly justified. No one on Wall Street has apologized. No one has accepted responsibility for causing the crisis. While jobless victims of this crisis face increasing foreclosures, many of the firms that caused the crisis are—with government assistance—returning to past habits.

Few of us were alive at the time of the Pecora Commission. However, many of us remember an equally famous investigation that gripped the attention of the country: The Senate Watergate Committee (formally known as the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities). In a bipartisan effort, Senators Sam Ervin and Howard Baker led the country through a national catharsis that exposed wrongdoing in the Executive Branch and restored vital trust in our democratic institutions.

Both of these investigations reflected essential, self-correcting mechanisms that have allowed our democracy to flourish for over two centuries: The ability to hold individuals—no matter how powerful or wealthy—equally accountable for their actions, to publicly acknowledge when something has gone wrong, and to enact meaningful reform.

The work of the FCIC represents both a similar opportunity and a potential danger. By shining a bright light on the causes of this crisis, the FCIC has the chance to once again demonstrate that no one is approve reproach and to provide a clear map of the problems that successful reform must address. With these results, the FCIC can demonstrate that the American system continues to work, and enhance trust in our democratic system.

The danger is that the FCIC does not fulfill this critical mandate, and it is ultimately perceived as failing to have aggressively searched for the truth. If this happens, my hypothesis is the nation will almost inevitably slide further on the path toward paralyzing cynicism. What happens then?

Pecora Commission To Be Named This Week?

Bill Scher — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:01:22 -0400

Word is circulating in Washington that members for the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission will be named this week.

The commission is supposed to resemble the 1930s Pecora commission that dug into the culprits behind the Great Depression and laid the groundwork for major bank reform. But that will only be true if the commission is run by aggressive seekers of truth, independent of the financial industry, willing to use their subpoena power, knowledgeable enough to have warned us of impeding crisis in the first place despite market cheerleading from the political and media establishments.

Will the maximum sentence given to Bernie Madoff, after he ruined the lives of many, put a renewed spotlight on the need for tough reforms?

OurFuture.org's Eric Lotke and Reuters columnist Matthew Goldstein hope so.

As Lotke wrote:

So Madoff got 150 years for breaking into the bank. Fine.

But what about the guard who was asleep out front? What about the clerk who forgot to lock the door? What about the $300 billion that Citigroup walked out with from one vault, and the $200 billion that AIG took from another? Does anybody know where that money went or what we got for it? Don’t they get in trouble too? Did you know that, or do you know why, Goldman Sachs is paying its biggest bonus payouts in its 140 year history?

That’s why we need a Pecora Commission.

And Goldstein remarked:

Indeed, for all the misery Madoff and his Ponzi brethren have caused, none of those scam artists were the cause of the crisis that brought the financial system to the brink. If anything, it was the financial crisis that helped flush out Madoff and his scurrilous ilk, as many investors rushed for the exits at the same time.

So that's why Congress needs to act quickly to get up and running a bipartisan commission to study the underlying causes of the financial crisis.

Speculation from Reuters last week on who might be named was not terribly encouraging, though most of the names floated clearly were coming from conservative circles, as Republican leaders will pick four of the 10 members. Robert Kuttner explained in the Huffington Post:

Among the names leaked is just one person with the stature, expertise, and resolve to run a tough investigation (if she were chair)--Brooksley Born ...

...On the Republican side, with one exception, the leaked names could be an alumni society of the people whose policies helped cause the collapse. The absolute howler in the list is former senator Jake Garn of Utah, a tireless proponent of financial deregulation. Among other travesties, Garn sponsored the Garn-St. Germain Act of 1982, the law that allowed savings and loan associations to become speculators' playgrounds, and led directly to the S&L collapse.

Another proposed Republican is Bill Thomas, former chair of the House Ways and Means, a legislator who never met a financial special interest he didn't like; and former Republican Senator and presidential candidate Fred Thompson...

...The only other Democrat on Reuters' leaked list is former Florida senator and governor Bob Graham, a self-identified New Democrat who served on both the Senate Banking and Finance Committees. Missing, except for Born, are people with deep knowledge and informed criticism of the abuses that led to the crisis.

It does not have to be this way.

Dismay and disgust at Wall Street behavior is prevalent among voters across the ideological spectrum. It is not necessarily in either parties political interest to appoint industry shills and knee-jerk opponents of regulation. But they would only pay a political price if people knew about the appointments.

However, the media is great at covering the spectacle at the end of the debacle -- like the Madoff conviction -- it is not as good at informing Americans at the beginning of a process when their input might actually make a difference.

Most Americans do not know that the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission is on the verge of naming its members. Nor do they know what difference the right people could make, not just in nailing the culprits behind the market meltdown, but ensuring that we enact reforms that actually reform the flaws in our flimsy regulations.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Minority Leader John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell will be naming the commission members soon, most likely this week. Now is the time to let them know the type of person you want to have subpoena power on your behalf.