Panel begins inquiry into financial meltdown

AP on Yahoo ^ | 9/17/09 | Anne Flaherty - ap

[NormsRevenge]

WASHINGTON – The chairman of a new congressionally appointed panel has promised a no-holds barred investigation into last year's devastating economic collapse.

The inquiry will look into whether any of the nation's biggest financial firms and the regulators in charge of monitoring them were guilty of criminal misconduct.

Phil Angelides, appointed this year by Democrats to lead the 10-member Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, said the group will examine the conduct of top officials at such firms as Lehman Brothers, Citigroup, AIG and Bear Stearns, as well as mortgage buyers Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

[NormsRevenge]

It better have wide scope to investigate or this will be just another farcical production...

What am I saying? It's the rats investigating themselves.

Move along folks, nothing to see.

[Parley Baer]

“Phil Angelides, appointed this year by Democrats”

The red warning flags are flying high on this one.

[griswold3]

mark

[RockinRight]

We gonna investigage Obama’s involvement with ACORN, who is possibly the largest offender of pushing fraudulent loans?

[NormsRevenge]

Po’ guy needs a job? lol

[E. Pluribus Unum]

We know what caused it. Bad loans the FDIC forced banks to make under the auspices of the Community Reinvestment Act that were laundered by "bundling" them into derivative securities and sold to unsuspecting marks.

PS - Nothing has changed. Bad loans are still being mandated by the FDIC. The next time this bubble bursts, the whole house of cards is coming down.

[unixfox]

Let me be the first to say:

BUSH'S FAULT!

[NormsRevenge]

Here is what Congress is asking the FCIC to look into:

http://www.pbs.org/nbr/blog/2009/09/the_financial_crisis_inquiry_c.html

Functions of the Commission.—The functions of the Commission are—

(1) to examine the causes of the current financial and economic crisis in the United States, specifically the role of—

(A) fraud and abuse in the financial sector, including fraud and abuse towards consumers in the mortgage sector;
(B) Federal and State financial regulators, including the extent to which they enforced, or failed to enforce statutory, regulatory, or supervisory requirements;
(C) the global imbalance of savings, international capital flows, and fiscal imbalances of various governments;
(D) monetary policy and the availability and terms of credit;
(E) accounting practices, including, mark-to-market and fair value rules, and treatment of off-balance sheet vehicles;
(F) tax treatment of financial products and investments;
(G) capital requirements and regulations on leverage and liquidity, including the capital structures of regulated and non-regulated financial entities;
(H) credit rating agencies in the financial system, including, reliance on credit ratings by financial institutions and Federal financial regulators, the use of credit ratings in financial regulation, and the use of credit ratings in the securitization markets;
(I) lending practices and securitization, including the originate-to-distribute model for extending credit and transferring risk;
(J) affiliations between insured depository institutions and securities, insurance, and other types of nonbanking companies;
(K) the concept that certain institutions are “too-big-to-fail” and its impact on market expectations;
(L) corporate governance, including the impact of company conversions from partnerships to corporations;
(M) compensation structures;
(N) changes in compensation for employees of financial companies, as compared to compensation for others with similar skill sets in the labor market;
(O) the legal and regulatory structure of the United States housing market;
(P) derivatives and unregulated financial products and practices, including credit default swaps;
(Q) short-selling;
(R) financial institution reliance on numerical models, including risk models and credit ratings;
(S) the legal and regulatory structure governing financial institutions, including the extent to which the structure creates the opportunity for financial institutions to engage in regulatory arbitrage;
(T) the legal and regulatory structure governing investor and mortrgagor protection;
(U) financial institutions and government-sponsored enterprises; and
(V) the quality of due diligence undertaken by financial institutions;

(2) to examine the causes of the collapse of each major financial institution that failed (including institutions that were acquired to prevent their failure) or was likely to have failed if not for the receipt of exceptional Government assistance from the Secretary of the Treasury during the period beginning in August 2007 through April 2009

[BGHater]

Nothings gonna come from this. Same as before, the wall, etc.

[kittymyrib]

And what about Goldman Sachs, who was paid back dollar for dollar by the tax payer when AIG failed, and who saw its competitor, Lehman, go bust? What a charmed life this corporation has led during the financial melt-down. Of course, having most of the Fed and Treasury owning stock in the company because they previously worked there didn’t hurt.

[top 2 toe red]

Investigation finds after a taxpayer cost of 5.8 million dollars and months of hearings, it has quite confidently concluded it was...Bush's Fault!

[RobRoy]

"last year's...collapse..."

?

What about THIS year's?

[Nathan Zachary]

"Phil Angelides, appointed this year by Democrats to lead the 10-member Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, said the group will examine the conduct of top officials at such firms as Lehman Brothers, Citigroup, AIG and Bear Stearns, as well as mortgage buyers Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae."

How about ACORN, the entire Democrat party, Barack Obama, Bill Ayers, where all this scam to rob the nation, and indeed the WORLD of wealth in order to give loans to unqualified do nothing "minorities"?

Fat chance. This is just burying the issue under more layers of democrat political corruption.

[ClearCase_guy]

“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming. We have a lot of work in front of us as we begin our study of this financial meltdown. Let’s get started. So, in conclusion, this was Bush’s fault. Now begins the hard part — how can we piece together enough evidence to make the case of this?”

[NormsRevenge]

Financial commission starts recession inquiry

http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/59207-financial-commission-starts-recession-inquiry

By Silla Brush - 09/17/09 11:29 AM ET

The special commission charged by Congress to investigate the financial crisis got fully under way on Thursday as lawmakers vow to pass major new financial regulations this fall.

The commission will hold public hearings, seek documents and look into the actions of public officials and private companies in an effort to uncover the roots of a meltdown that pushed the economy to the brink of another depression.

“If we do not learn from history, we are unlikely to fully recover from it,” said Phil Angelides, the commission’s chairman and former candidate for governor of California. “We must write a history that is factual, substantive and understandable. If we do this right, our work can serve as an antidote.”

—snip—

[Dubya-M-DeesWent2SyriaStupid!]

Think they will report CitiBank in bed with ACORN doing so many sub-prime loans?

By the time we get the real results it will be too late.

[The Comedian]

Phil Angelides, appointed this year by Democrats

I see a "Not guilty" verdict in the near future...

[ErnBatavia]

Nothings gonna come from this.

Wrong-O! This "commission" report will just solidify, in the minds of the media and therefore most of the public, that "It's all Bush's fault".

[frposty]

Missing from the list: investigate the effect of the government’s insuring of mortgages known to be risky. The authors of that long list would likely claim that one of the items covers this.

I listened to an interview by a Harvard economist. He said that the financial institutions still believe that the government will bail them out of future messes, even though the government says no we won’t. Result: the institutions continue to engage in risky behavior.

[PhiKapMom]

Read this article from BigGovernment.com to find out this is going nowhere:

Sham Angelides Commission Will Protect ACORN
by Phil Kerpen

Congress’s official investigation into the financial crisis, the so-called Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, will convene its first meeting today. Unfortunately, Nancy Pelosi’s handpicked chairman of the commission Phil Angelides, has deep ties to radical left-wing politics, including the Van Jones-connected Apollo Alliance, which he chairs, and ACORN, which is an Apollo member and endorsed and actively supported his gubernatorial campaign. His selection proves the commission will be a politicized attempt to advance a left-wing agenda through a revisionist history of the financial crisis. It also assures that ACORN and other community organizers who forced banks to make reckless loans in the name of affordable housing will be let off the hook.

(Excerpt) Click Here for Full Article NOTE: Take a good look at this picture as this is the guy in charge appointed by Pelosi who is a friend of Jones.