[Post Summary]Nor is the ear filled with hearing.
—Ecclesiastes
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Today, Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) laid down the gauntlet on how matters addressing our current financial crisis should proceed. According to the Senator, identifying how we got into this mess in the first place must be established before anything can be done to resolve the crisis whose impact has incapacitated huge swaths of our nation's credit markets and thrown the economy into a tailspin. I could not agree more.
In his opening statement before the Senate Banking Committee the Ranking Member called for hearings to be run by the very same Senate Banking Committee that staged the Pecora Hearings during the 1930s, citing almost word for word issues of accountability I argued just the other day.
(Watch today's Banking Committee hearings here. Senator Shelby's opening statement begins at 29:25.)
At the very least it seems likely the Senator is signaling that, Republicans in the Senate might not be at all inclined to rush President Obama's agenda through the legislature. This apparently includes anything having to do with next week's anticipated announcement of a bank rescue package from the President's Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner.
Up until recently Senator Shelby has been a CNBC darling. Then came his opposition to the TARP, and now this. A new Pecora Commission has got to be the last thing Jamie Dimon wanted to hear. But it rings a sound of willingness to honestly address our grave financial crisis with an objective toward restoring stability and leveling the playing field for all Americans, be they investors or not. Today, hope for the Republic, if not moved onto the front burner, was at least brought out of the cupboard. Before sitting back and enjoying the show, let your Senator know Banking Committee hearings on the causes of our financial crisis are exactly what the doctor ordered.
—Tom Chechatka
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