One very scary year ago this week, we were tipping headfirst into an economic black hole that threatened to suck down the global economy. How did it happen? Congress has created a 10-member citizens commission to find out. At its head is Phil Angelides, Democrat and millionaire businessman who served as California’s state treasurer for eight years and then lost his bid for governor in 2006. Lately he’s been working with Magic Johnson to create a fund to fix up and “green up” affordable rental housing for working families. Now he’ll be spending a couple of weeks a month in a rented office on Pennsylvania Avenue between the International Monetary Fund and the White House. It’s called the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, but in the ways of Washington, these things can end up bearing the names of their chairmen — the Pecora Commission, the Warren Commission. So by Dec. 15, 2010, we’ll have the full report from what will surely be known as the Angelides Commission.
What’s the commission’s mission?
I hope what we’ll do is write the history of what the heck happened — how’s that for the technical term? Everyone has theories about what led to the collapse, but the commission is an opportunity to examine what were the steps along the road in the collapse, from the top to the bottom, and when were those seeds sown? The 9/11 Commission report — obviously the terrorist plot of 9/11 didn’t commence on 9/11. It was years in the making. And the implosion of our financial markets was years in the making. So think of this as “CSI: Wall Street.” We know there’s been a cataclysmic event, and our job now is to trace, to deconstruct the crime, so to speak.
Your group has some muscle, including subpoena powers.
The best way to do this is with voluntary cooperation. All the federal agencies involved — the regulators, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac — my hope is that we will get cooperation because it’s the right thing for the country. I would also hope that I’m not naive here, that the financial world, the CEOs of all those big banks that were salvaged by millions of dollars of money from the taxpayers, would do what’s right for the national interest.
This is an inquiry and an investigation in the best sense of the word. It’s not a star chamber proceeding. It’s not just about trying to find 20 perps and line them up, because that would, in a sense, minimize the story. It’s not a theatrical exercise just to go get some people; it’s not a whitewash, nor is it purely a theoretical academic story.
We have the authority to make criminal referrals — that’s not the primary purpose of our inquiry. But in the course of our work, we may well come across instances of criminality. I suspect we will also come across practices that were wholly legal and condoned and …
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