Following through on her commitment last week at the Commonwealth Club, Pelosi moves to schedule hearings:

Wall Street may be heading for the deepest investigation of its practices since a congressional panel’s probe of abuses following the 1929 stock market crash.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to push for a comprehensive inquiry, saying that three-quarters of Americans want to know what led to the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and the collapse of Bear Stearns Cos. and Merrill Lynch & Co. She favors one patterned after Senate Banking Committee hearings led by Ferdinand Pecora starting in 1933, according to her spokesman, Nadeam Elshami.

The Pecora review “was probably the single most important congressional investigation in the history of our country, except perhaps the Watergate hearings,” Donald Ritchie, associate historian for the U.S. Senate, said in an interview.

I never thought I'd use the words "predictably lame" and "Barney Frank" in the same sentence, but The Big Disappointer, er, does not disappoint: Barney Frank's response is predictably lame:

From Krugman's home page at the Times:

Just sayin.

Come on. This story's been cooking since at least February, Hamsher's on the case, everybody who is anybody in Princeton listens to Bill Moyers, and the OFB think the story's important enough to shoot the messenger (and miss. Snicker).

And if Black is right, and accounting control fraud by the banksters is at the heart of our financial crisis, that has huge implications: Morally, legally, financially, politically. (That's why a Pecora Commission is on the "Make him do it" list.) And if he's wrong, it would really help to know that, and cross that worry off.

But Krugman's been silent. Curious, no?  Read more…

Speaking Wednesday at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that she will act next week to begin setting up an investigatory committee to examine and document what went wrong with economic policy and practices.

I post in haste, so Wikipedia:

The Pecora Commission is the name commonly used to describe the commission established on March 4, 1932, by the United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs to investigate the causes of the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The name refers to the fourth and final Chief Counsel to the committee, Ferdinand Pecora.

The Pecora Commission initiated major reform of the American financial system. As Chief Counsel, Ferdinand Pecora personally examined many high-profile witnesses that included some of the nation's most influential bankers and stockbrokers.

In 1939 Ferdinand Pecora published his memoirs that recounted details of the investigations. Titled "Wall Street Under Oath", Pecora wrote: "Bitterly hostile was Wall Street to the enactment of the regulatory legislation." As to disclosure rules, he stated that "Had there been full disclosure of what was being done in furtherance of these schemes, they could not long have survived the fierce light of publicity and criticism. Legal chicanery and pitch darkness were the banker's stoutest allies."

Plus ca "change," plus c'est la meme chose....