Hat tip to bringiton

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As LA Times Money blogger Michael Hiltzik says:

There's plenty to investigate. The roots of the economic and financial crisis can be found in the commercial banking, investment banking, mortgage trading, credit and derivatives industries.
Two key questions: Will Angelides and the rest of the panel hire investigators smart enough to ferret out the modern-day Mitchells? And will the panel be willing to preside over a Pecora-style bloodletting?

From the Wall Street Journal: Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have named Phil Angelides to chair the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.

Modeled on the Pecora Commission of the 1930s, this is an effort to figure out what happened to the US economy.
Other members of the commission are Brooksley E. Born, Bob Graham and Bill Thomas.

_{Graham, official portrait}

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid today announced six appointments to the 10-member Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, established by Congress to examine the domestic and global causes of the financial crisis. “The American people deserve nothing less than a full explanation of why so many people lost their homes, their life’s savings, and their hard-earned pensions,” said Pelosi.

“As President Obama has said on several occasions, sunlight is the best disinfectant,” said Reid. “The American people are entitled to a thorough examination of what went wrong. ”

Here's a *CLUE* for you, Harry and Nancy: what went wrong is *YOU* *FAILED* to uphold the law -- specifically, the regulations that, for more than 50 years, kept the economy from collapsing in the wake of unremitting greed run amok. The original Pecora Commission figured out for FDR that greed and chicanery on Wall Street caused the crash of 1929. Hence we got the Glass-Steagall Act. From the days of Reagan, an Aggie economics professor named Phil Gramm and the Republicans fought hard to overturn those regulations until the failure of Lehman Brothers made clear to all of us -- even such economic naifs as Reid and Pelosi -- that the NOW NOW NOW NOW mentality, the profits-first, people-be-damned ideology is designed to fail.

It fails 'cause it's reckless. It fails 'cause it's feckless. It fails 'cause it puts profits first and consequences in the "nevermind" category.

On your watch, Nancy and Harry, Glass-Steagall, which governed Wall Street with an eye to sound practices, went away. FAILURE after FAILURE followed, like dominoes tipped into each other in a line. The only persons surprised by this must have been ... you, Harry and Nancy!

Gramm and company brought us the unregulated free market environment in which it became chic to underwrite bad loans with imaginary values and approve loans for borrowers who had no income, no assets, and no collateral to stake on the success of their borrowing. Of course, the Main$tream Media said, nobody could have anticipated anything could go wrong -- except, Brooksley Born did, back when Bill Clinton was considering her for Attorney General (Janet Reno got the post, and Born was appointed to the CTFC), in the 1990s (!!!!!).

A friend of mine likes to say: there's nothing like unemployment to motivate a person to become invovled in politics. I'm not exactly claiming that's what went on here in AZ, but this GOS diary is interesting. Here's a key paragraph:

"In this past election we had hundreds of volunteers coming through our Acoma district office for the general election and the party wasn’t prepared to provide the support we needed on voter contact and phone banking lists to keep our people busy and effective. Because of the huge number of volunteers we had, we burned through in one day Party targeting lists they expected would take three days. And the party was unable to generate new lists to take full advantage of our enthusiastic volunteers. From what I have heard many other districts experienced this same frustration. And that frustration was a contributing factor in this call for a change in leadership."

After reading VL's post, I got to thinking about something Chris Bowers wrote awhile ago about how if the Democrats lost this election, it would be a failure of the party and the entire party leadership should resign. I think this may be how we could achieve party unity - by holding party officials accountable for the failures of the party. The rewards for success will flow from winning and should take care of themselves. Although if the Democratic candidate wins in November, credit should be given where credit is due and that extends beyond the individual candidate.

Wow, I was having lunch today and CNN and later Fox was on, and later away from the intertubes. And what do I find when I check in? Everything I heard the political reporters at CNN and Fox say turned out to be not true. I'm shocked.

First: Carville can find a new boy. I guess Ford knows he's a loser after all.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Rep. Harold Ford, Jr. declared Monday he has no interest in chairing the Democratic National Committee, tamping down speculation he would challenge current chairman Howard Dean for the post.

"I have just finished a tough Senate election, and while I care about the future direction of my party, I am not interested in taking over the DNC," the Tennessee Democrat said in a statement released by his campaign. "We are now the majority party in the House and Senate, and it is time to move beyond the politics of the campaign and work towards bringing the country together around a common agenda that will strengthen us at home and abroad."