Congress Approves a Financial Crisis Investigation Commission

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Earlier this week, the House passed the final version of a bill intended to enhance enforcement of financial crimes, one of the provisions of which will create a 10-member commission to investigate the causes of the financial crisis. The vote was 338 to 52.

The Senate passed the same version of the bill last week, and the President is expected to sign it short order.

During deliberations between House and Senate leaders to resolve differences between the bills, negotiators made one potentially important change to the commission's guidelines, which now require that at least one member appointed by the Senate or House Minority Leader assent to the issuance of subpoenas, should they be necessary to compel testimony or other evidence. Whether that impacts the functioning of the commission will depend, I suppose, on how many subpoenas turn out to be necessary, and how much the Republican appointees resemble their appointers in Congress. Financial Crisis Investigative Commission To Become Law

I can only hope that this commission will be led by someone with the depth of knowledge and tough-minded prosecutorial instincts of Ferdinand Pecora who so successfully investigated the Wall Street Crash of 1929. His investigation led to landmark regulatory reforms of the financial services industry.

I would like to see perhaps Harry Markopolos who investigated and unraveled the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme and several other fraud schemes. I have written about Markopolos here previously.

Or maybe former New York governor and attorney general Elliot Spitzer, who was one of the premier prosecutors of financial services crimes before he got into trouble for having a taste for high priced call girls. Everyone is entitled to a shot at redemption. This may be the perfect opportunity for Spitzer to redeem himself by finishing the job that he started of cleaning up Wall Street.