Around the Web: Now, They Won't

I remember when the Obama administration burst into office leading the nation in its campaign mantra: Yes we can. Later they adapted a new mantra to acknowledge how bad the economy was but how hard they were trying to fix it: It could have been worse. After the Democrats got walloped in the midterms, the president adjusted with his latest mantra: this was the best I could do.

Now his treasury secretary has offered the administration’s latest spin: No, you can’t.

Tim Geithner, the architect of so much of the administration’s no questions asked bailout of corporate America, is refusing homeowners facing foreclosure access to legal assistance to fight to save their homes, Zach Carter reports at Huffington Post.

Democrats from foreclosure-ravaged states are working on legislation that would overrule Geithner’s edict but the leadership isn’t interested.

This in spite of the massive failure of the administration’s foreclosure relief program, even when mortgage servicers are wrongfully attempting to throw people out of their homes.

According to a recent survey, banks started foreclosure proceedings against 2,500 homeowners while they were in the process of getting their mortgages modified.

When it comes to fixing the inadequate programs they’ve offered to fix the foreclosure mess, the Obama administration has offered a consistent mantra: No, we won’t.

Meanwhile, the state attorney general leading the 50-state investigation into the foreclosure scandal, Tom Miller, has some pretty tough talk.

Unlike the Obama administration, Miller comes right out and says that the mortgage principal should be reduced as part of any settlement with mortgage servicers. “One of the main tools needs to be principal reductions, just like in the farm crisis in the 1980s,” Miller said. “There should be some kind of compensation system for people who have been harmed. And the foreclosure process should stop while loan modifications begin. To have a race between foreclosures and modifications to see which happens first is insane.”

And yes he will, Miller insists, put financial criminals in jail.

Around the Web / Foreclosures / Martin Column - 12/16/2010

In Taxbreakistan, the Usual Casualties

Rather than confronting the country’s growing economic disparity and attempting to reduce it, our political leaders are pursuing policies that just make it worse.

Remember when we were told that the bailout was supposed to save our economy? It worked amazingly well for those who are well off – the banks are back in the black, the bankers are pocketing huge bonuses, corporate profits are soaring and the stock market is humming along.

But for those less fortunate, the situation remains dire: unemployment is stuck around 10 percent, wages are stagnant, state and local governments face staggering cutbacks in all services, and foreclosures continue unabated.

The most recent example of this glaring callousness is the deal President Obama reached with GOP leaders to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for 2 years in exchange for keeping unemployment compensation coming for 13 months.

Both the president and the Republicans profess to be unhappy with everything they had to give up and said nasty things about each other. The president insisted it was simply the best deal to be had to get some stimulus in the face of Republican intransigence.  But the president never took to the airwaves to challenge the Republicans on the tax cuts or the unemployment insurance. After his party’s “shellacking” in the midterms, he just headed for the back room to make a deal on his own, without ever trying to galvanize public opinion, which according to the polls, wasn’t even sympathetic to the high-end tax cuts.

So far the Senate has appears ready to pass the deal with votes to spare but the House has balked.

Back when he was candidate Obama, the president had no qualms about proclaiming just how unfair the tax cuts for the wealthiest were, how little they do for the rest of the economy, and how worthy they were of opposing. Now the president labels as `sanctimonious’ those who agree with the position he took so forcefully when he ran for president.

But the tax cuts for the wealthy won’t work any better now that that they’re the Obama tax cuts than they did when they were the Bush tax cuts.

The Center for American Progress breaks the $954 billion Obama tax cut deal into two parts: first, a $133 billion tax cut for the wealthiest, including $120 billion in lower taxes for the top 2% of U.S. households, plus $13 billion in estate tax savings. The other $821 billion consists of government cash for unemployment benefits, tax cuts for the middle class and small-business job-creation incentives.

The deal is supposed to create somewhere between 2.2 and 3.1 million jobs, though some find those estimates vastly inflated. CAP contends that the deal offers a relatively expensive way to create those jobs.

Economist Dean Baker questions a lot of the phony hysterics being used to sell the deal as scare tactics. He doubts the president’s assertion that is the only way or last chance to extend unemployment benefits. If unemployment stays above 8 percent as the Federal Reserve projects that it will, both Republicans and the president will feel pressure to extend benefits.

But one of the worst aspects of the deal is the way that it actually raises taxes on the working poor, according to the Tax Policy Center. That’s because the president has agreed, as part of the deal, to phase out his own Making Work Pay tax cut (implemented as part of his previous stimulus package) and replaced it with a temporary Social Security payroll tax cut. The Making Work Pay tax cut was focused on the working poor, giving single people with incomes of at least $6,452 and less than $75,000 a $400 tax break and couples making less than $120,000 an $800 tax break. People at the lower end of those income ranges would do worse under the present Obama tax cut deal. Wealthier taxpayers meanwhile, stand to do better with the payroll tax break than they did under Making Work Pay, which phased out at higher income brackets.

To me the tax deal looks suspiciously like the bailout – shoveling money to those who have suffered the least, without any conditions imposed to require that they plow some of that cash back into the economy, only the vain hope that they will share their prosperity.

We assumed that’s what the bailout recipients would do with all of our tax money.

We know now how that worked out.

Federal Reserve / Martin Column / President Barack Obama / TARP - 12/14/2010

Lame Ducks, Bogus Excuses

Sen. Chris Dodd brought the big banks back to Capitol Hill Tuesday to hear more about the foreclosure mess.

By the end of the day Dodd, who is retiring from the Senate after presiding over the watering down of financial reform, had a novel response: he called for an investigation.

By now nearly federal agency as well as every state attorney general is already investigating the scandal, after banks disclosed the shoddy record-keeping they were using in the foreclosure process.

How hard any of these investigations is really digging is an open question. But the more the merrier, according to Dodd. He suggested it would be a first test for the systemic risk council, which was set up under the financial reform law that bears his name, along with his House colleague Barney Frank.

The systemic risk council will be made up of members of the Obama administration, led by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. The administration has already brushed off the foreclosure scandal, so it’s highly unlikely the council would come back later and reverse its assessment.

Meanwhile the congressional bailout monitor, now headed by former Delaware senator Ted Kaufman, issued a stern warning about the consequences of the foreclosure scandal in its monthly report. “If document irregularities prove to be pervasive and, more importantly, throw into question ownership of not only foreclosed properties but also pooled mortgages, the result could be significant harm to the financial stability,” the monitor wrote.

Not to worry, the big banks keep reassuring us. It’s just a matter of some sloppy paperwork.

The big banks’ credibility, to put it politely, is not so hot. For example, Bank of America insists that they would be doing better modifying mortgages if not for the investors standing in the way. So the investigative journalism outfit Pro Publica took a look and found out their explanation was bogus.

Around the Web / Bank of America (BoA) / Martin Column - 11/17/2010

A Yes Vote for a National Ballot Initiative

While the long-predicted tsunami of voter anger is about to break across the national political landscape, oddly enough this may just be one cataclysmic event that California won’t experience. Yesterday the New York Times has pronounced the House of Representatives all but lost to the Democrats, but today’s Los Angeles Times reports that Jerry Brown’s lead over Meg Whitman doubled over the last month.

That might have something to do with Whitman’s obscene spending for the post – Californians have a tradition of rejecting the candidacies of people who treat high office as a new found hobby – and it couldn’t have helped that Whitman hired (and then cruelly fired) an undocumented housekeeper.

But wait. The Times’ polling also showed that in California, “Democrats have gained strength and GOP motivation has ebbed slightly in the last month.”

So what’s up with California voters? People elsewhere might attribute it to the weather, or our mythical blessed out state. But that’s not it: 81% of Californians told the pollsters that the state is “seriously off on the wrong track.”

I have a theory to explain why California voters aren’t reflecting the national trend, and it’s based on a political safety-valve unique to California: our often-maligned ballot initiative process.

This year, as in most elections, California voters will not only fill over a dozen federal, state and local elective offices. They will get to decide some major public policy issues, including legalization of marijuana, reapportionment, climate change, and majority rule in the state Legislature – a total of nine ballot propositions.

Californians rightly complain about the initiative process – that it’s increasingly invoked by the powerful special interests, that we shouldn’t have to do the politicians’ jobs for them – but the fact is, we love initiatives. Ballot measures empower Californians, giving us the opportunity – for better or worse – to shape our own destiny.

For many Californians, politicians are already a lost cause. What excites and inspires people to pay attention to politics here is the dynamic, creative and often chaotic opportunity to sidestep the political establishment and take matters into their own hands.

“For all the problems ballot initiative politics present today, the ballot measure offers the best part of modern politics,” says California citizen leader Jamie Court in his new book, “Raising Hell.” That’s “the ability to directly change injustice, without the main problem with politics today, politicians who are too corrupt or inept to make changes.”

In most states, angry voters can only vent their frustration by choosing from an often deeply unsatisfying list of candidates, a  desperate exercise in the “lesser of two evils.” When politicians are the only available target, the electorate’s outrage is by necessity narrowly focused. And it also gets amplified, like when you pump water through a fire hose. So it’s “throw the bums out” – as is likely to happen next week throughout the nation, whether or not they deserve it. Then the voters get to welcome a whole new bunch of bums.

Ballot initiatives offer a much more precise weapon: for example, an initiative to roll back auto insurance premiums, like I wrote in 1988, in the middle of public indignation over skyrocketing insurance premiums, when California lawmakers were too afraid of their industry patrons to do anything about it.

I’m as angry as everyone else these days about how Washington and Wall Street got together and betrayed us. If we had a national initiative process, I’d propose a cap on the interest rates banks and credit card companies can charge us for borrowing our own money from them.

Harvey Column - 10/25/2010

Around the Web: Outsourcing Foreclosure `Catastrophe'

You wouldn’t think the leader of the free world would be so willing to outsource a massive foreclosure scandal to state attorneys general, judges, regulators and the big banks that created the mess in the first place.

But that’s exactly what President Obama has done, standing aside while 50 state attorneys general launch investigations, while banks implement their own voluntary moratoriums, announcing they have halted some, but not all, foreclosure proceedings.

A growing number of politicians, civil rights and consumer groups and labor unions have called for a nationwide moratorium amid allegations that banks violated foreclosure laws by using sloppy, false or fraudulent paperwork to kick people out of their homes.

But President Obama doesn’t like the idea of a foreclosure moratorium, which he fears could put the kibosh on his fragile recovery.

Where is the administration’s effort at finding some other creative solution to the mess the big banks have created across the country? What we find instead are regulators that have been ignoring clear warning signs about the banks’ troubled foreclosure crisis.

The federal response so far has been limp at best: a Justice Department inquiry (short of an investigation) and a call by a federal regulator for the banks to voluntarily verify that their foreclosure paperwork is in order.

Recent press reports call into question whether the banks have even implemented the foreclosure moratoriums they promised. Meanwhile more banks, this time Wells-Fargo, acknowledge they have also violated the laws governing foreclosure by submitting unverified documents to take people’s homes. Isn’t there an election coming up where the Democrats are fighting to maintain control of Congress, with their entire agenda at stake? Isn’t there already one party that has expertly cornered the whole do-nothing stick-your-head-in-the-sand approach to unemployment and foreclosure? Doesn’t the president know how awful it looks to most people to have the bailed-out banks getting away with yet more hanky-panky?

You would think the president would want to appear more engaged in this issue that’s so close to the heart of our on-going economic troubles.

His treasury secretary fears “unintended consequences". Apparently the administration would prefer the banks continue to foreclose on people using phony documents. While Wall Street predicts a catastrophe if a moratorium is implemented. If the big bankers want to know who created a catastrophe that will cost them billions, they only need to look in the mirror.

Bank of America (BoA) / Foreclosures / Martin Column / Outrage / President Barack Obama - 10/15/2010

"Conspiracy of Ignorance" Demands Attention

In California, the nation’s largest real estate market, the robo-signing scandal has produced many calls to halt foreclosures, but little real change so far.

For several years, lawyers who represent borrowers in foreclosure have been complaining about massive and gnarly problems in the foreclosure process.

Because of the way Wall Street sliced and diced mortgages into derivatives and sold them off, the ownership of the mortgage had often not been properly documented, these lawyers said.

Such documentation is a basic legal requirement of foreclosures.

But they couldn’t get many judges to go along with them, especially in California, where, by state law, judges don’t typically oversee foreclosures. They only get involved if a borrower files suit to block a foreclosure, and even then, the courts are reluctant to do anything that would benefit borrowers who haven’t been paying their mortgages.

But disclosures over the past week in the robo-signing scandal may change that, after bank officials disclosed that they signed thousands of foreclosure documents without reading them first. Among the problems were documents that appeared to be forged or inaccurate assessments of how much borrowers owed on their mortgages.

In states with court-supervised foreclosures, the big banks voluntarily called a halt to foreclosures. But not in non-judicial foreclosure states like California.

The banks’ position so far is that the robo-signing doesn’t represent any substantial problems in the documentation, just that they were overwhelmed and understaffed and couldn’t keep up with the paperwork.

Walter Hackett disagrees. He’s a former bank executive who now represents borrowers in foreclosure at Inland Empire Legal Services. Hackett also runs an online bulletin board for lawyers fighting foreclosure. “Sloppy paperwork is too nice a way to describe it,” Hackett told me. “It’s a conspiracy of ignorance.”

He recalled dealing with Wells Fargo on behalf of one client. They were promising his client a loan modification; however, by the time Hackett untangled the paperwork, it turned out the mortgage was actually owned by another bank.  “Before a bank can foreclose on a property, they have to prove that they own the note,” Hackett said.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Jerry Brown has issued cease and desist orders against some of the big banks that have acknowledged problems in their paperwork. But Brown’s concern is not actually the robo-signing, a spokesman said, but whether the banks are complying with a California state law that requires the banks to attempt to work out a loan modification before they foreclose on a borrower.

Brown spokesman Jim Finefrock said, “We’re talking to them [the banks]. We’re hoping for a resolution of the matter.”

He acknowledged that Brown was focused on compliance with the California law, not the larger issues of whether documents had been improperly filed in foreclosure cases.

The implications of the foreclosure fiasco are potentially huge, what Reuters business blogger Felix Salmon describes as “the mother of all legal messes.” If the problems with the paperwork prove substantial, they could undermine previous foreclosures and home sales, leading to a waves of litigation involving borrowers, homeowners banks and investors. The bad news for the economy is that the robo-signing scandal will only prolong the foreclosure crisis, keeping those facing foreclosure, and the entire housing market, from attaining some kind of stability.

While politicians and organizations have been calling for investigations and moratoriums on foreclosures, those are only a start. We need real leadership to forge long-term solutions, instead of the weak half-measures we’ve gotten so far. Maybe the robo-signing mess will offer the opportunity for the administration, the banks and the investors to try again to solve the foreclosure debacle and to get it right this time.

Foreclosures / Martin Column - 10/08/2010

Around The Web: Wall Street Rules

When it comes to the big money, we’re still playing by Wall Street rules.
For example, California pension officials are paying their investment advisors hefty bonuses  even though the funds suffered whopping losses in the real estate crash, an investigation by Associated Press found.

The pension fund faces unfunded liabilities of billions of dollars, though there are sharp differences about the exact amount.

While the rest of the state suffers layoffs, cutbacks and furloughs, life is good for the crew at CALPERS. Fifteen employees were paid more than $200,000 – two more than two years earlier. Though the fund lost nearly $60 billion, all the funds investment managers got bonuses of more than $10,000, and several got more than $100,000.
CALPERS’ generosity extended beyond its investment advisers; the agency also gave its public affairs officer nearly $19,000 in bonuses for two straight years, and a human resources executive who got nearly $16,000 for those years.
Officials at CALPERS offer a variety of explanations: they say the bonuses cover 5 years to encourage their advisers to think long term, not short term. As a result, some of the managers’ funds that saw the steepest short-term declines got the largest bonuses. They have to pay the big bonuses despite the losses because they’re contractually obligated. They insist they have to pay the bonuses because if they don’t, their investment advisers will go to work at hedge funds.

Sound familiar? These are the same explanations we got from the big, bailed out banks who insisted that they had to hand over huge bonuses even though had to go on the dole.
CALPERS’ bonus system seems guaranteed to give its investment advisers lavish bonuses. When times are tough, the bonuses are a little less lavish. But none of the investment experts are actually accountable or will lose out for plunging the state’s pension in too deep into an unsustainable real estate bubble.

California’s pension system is hardly alone in making sure that those who manage its money are rewarded handsomely whether they win or lose.

In Massachusetts, the executive director of the state employees pension fund quit earlier this year while the Legislature contemplated a pay cap. Michael Travelgini, was paid a base salary of $322,000. In 2008, even though the fund’s investments lost money, they did better than other states, so he was given a $64,000 bonus.

Travelgini said the state’s investment managers weren’t paid enough. He’s going through the revolving door to work at a hedge fund that does business with the state, though he won’t solicit the state for a year.

These compensation issues are a strong reminder for the rest of us the lingering issues of the bubble culture. The people who run the pension systems seem to have been infected by the culture of Wall Street and forgotten whose money they’re managing. It will take a powerful disinfectant to remind them.

Around the Web / Executive Pay / Martin Column - 09/27/2010

Around the Web: Rookie Senator Fumbles Financial Reform

The news media / blogosphere have been having too much fun at the expense of the former Cosmo model who could be the key 41st vote if Republicans decide to kill financial reform.

It’s no shock Sen. Scott Brown would oppose it, given the enthusiastic support he got from Wall Street in his recent election, taking the Massachusetts seat long held by Ted Kennedy.

But Brown apparently got a little flustered when a reporter asked him to explain what exactly he was opposed to. It was one of those trick questions: What areas in the bill would Brown like to see fixed?

Brown responded by asking what the reporter thought. “Well, what areas do you think should be fixed?” Brown said. “I mean, you know, tell me. And then I’ll get a team and go fix it.’’

Eat the Press’s Jason Linkins snorted on Huffington Post: “Yes. Some reporter may want to point out the epic collapse of the derivatives market to Scott Brown, and he will assemble a team of... I don't know...sled dogs? To fix it? Is that good? Will that work?”

Brown told the Globe he opposed a consumer financial protection agency because it would add another layer of regulation.

“Which is, of course, true,” pointed out Washington Monthly’s Political Animal Steven Benen. “ That's the point of the legislation. The financial industry went unchecked and nearly destroyed the global economy. That's why the legislation is being considered – to bring oversight and accountability through regulation.”

Brown also faces some hard second-guessing on a novel argument he made against financial reform on Face the Nation last week: it’s a jobs killer. He asserted that it would cost his state 35,000 jobs – about 17 percent of the state’s financial sector workforce.

When the Globe followed up to nail down Brown’s source for that statement, his staff told the newspaper he got the figures from MassMutual, an insurance company based in the state that has opposed financial reform.

But company officials said Brown had misunderstood them; they were talking about job losses the state had already suffered. Even those figures were grossly inflated, the Globe found. According to the state’s Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development, the state has lost about 19,000 jobs in the financial sector, which includes the insurance industry, and also at banks, securities firms, investment management companies, and real estate businesses.

A MassMutual official insisted the company agreed with Brown anyway; similar losses could result from financial reform, he insisted. Sen. Brown stood by his earlier statements.

Whatever. A Globe columnist found Brown’s projections, as well as MassMutual’s, preposterous. “The idea that anything in the Senate bill could create additional job losses on a similar scale as the damage caused by the earthquake in the real estate and brokerage industries is simply nuts,” Globe columnist Steven Syre wrote.

Perhaps sensing an opportunity in Brown’s confusion, President Obama put in phone call to Brown from Air Force One.

The president probably didn’t bring up the question posed by Washington Monthly’s Benen: “Do you ever get the feeling that maybe Scott Brown isn't quite ready for prime-time, and that his service in the Senate is more humiliating than it should be?”

Around the Web / Martin Column - 04/21/2010

Don’t Dump the Government, Sue It!

When our government institutions fail us through incompetence or corruption – the financial collapse being Exhibit A – what is the solution? That’s the question I posed a few weeks ago.

The Tea Partyers increasingly seem to advocate getting rid of government altogether, or at least the federal government. They (and the health insurance industry) are getting a lot of mileage these days by arguing that the Wall Street debacle shows government cannot be trusted to regulate health care. It’s not a crazy argument, but their solution is.

When government fails, the answer is not to get rid of government, but to force it to work better. How?

To start, citizens should be given “standing to sue” the federal government. It might surprise you to learn that the courts have often rejected the right of citizens to go to court to enforce state and federal laws. When I worked for Congress Watch, the D.C.-based lobbying group founded by consumer advocate Ralph Nader, back in the late 1970s, one of our top goals was to make sure that when Congress passed a law, no matter the subject, it gave Americans the right to sue if a federal agency failed to enforce that law, conducted itself in an arbitrary manner, spent taxpayer money improperly, or if the law was unconstitutional. We were often unsuccessful, defeated by lobbyists for big business who hoped to later subvert the agencies with impunity. Nader has written frequently about this tool of democracy, and it’s also covered in an excellent biography of the Nader consumer organizations by David Bollier that is now available online.

Can you imagine how much economic damage could have been  avoided if citizens had been able to sue the federal agencies that unilaterally stopped regulating the Money Industry over the last decade?

A lot of Americans don’t like litigation – because they have never seen how it can work to protect their interests as consumers or taxpayers. But suing the government is a crucial, even life-saving right that is part of the law in some states, including California. For example, my colleagues at Consumer Watchdog and I sued the California Department of Managed Health Care when it suddenly started permitting HMOs to evade state laws and deny autistic children medically-necessary treatments. The agency’s misconduct began after intense behind-the-scenes lobbying by the heath insurance companies. The trial will be held this fall in a Los Angeles Superior Court and based on a recent preliminary ruling by the judge, we are looking forward to forcing this renegade agency to follow the law.

No doubt the prospect of litigation against the government raises fears of wasted taxpayer resources. But court rules allow judges to block truly frivolous cases. And I believe the costs would be more than offset by the benefits to Americans.

Standing to sue is one of many proposals for systemic reform that you don’t hear much about, because they aren’t sexy. They involve changes to the internal mechanisms of government. But if they were adopted, government would operate far more effectively and with much greater accountability to the public.

Harvey Column - 03/23/2010

What Would Pecora Do?

There have been lots of positive comparisons between Phil Angelides and Ferdinand Pecora, who led an earlier investigation of Wall Street excesses that led to the Great Depression.

Pecora was a no-holds barred former prosecutor who ran his hearings with meticulous preparation and theatrical flair, and his work galvanized public support for widespread reforms.

Some have been impressed by Angelides’ reputation as a reformer from his days as California treasurer, when he tried to use the power of the state’s investments for socially worthy causes and implemented some protections for shareholders. Angelides was widely praised after public hearings earlier this year for his understanding of high finance and his scolding of the head of Goldman-Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, comparing him to a used –car dealer.

I’ve been less impressed by Angelides, who doesn’t seem to have a grasp on the opportunity he has to marshal support for real financial reform. And he’s too cozy with a Democratic leadership that’s been soft on Wall Street in the wake of the financial meltdown.

I’m also suspicious of Angelides, the politician and former real estate developer who unsuccessfully ran for governor against Arnold Schwarzenegger, because of his close ties to the Democratic Party elite. In addition, I’m wary of the impact of Angelides' main job running a coalition promoting green technologies. That’s certainly a laudable goal, but Angelides and his Apollo Alliance aren’t going to get very far without lobbying the Obama administration and the Democrats, who would not be happy with a hard-hitting report.
Whatever drama Angelides manages to muster at any given moment, I’m concerned that his multiple roles and background will cause him to soft-pedal his investigation. Those concerns were only heightened after Angelides surfaced as part of a curious SEC report last week that cautions firms about “pay to play” in the state investment business.
According to the SEC, when Angelides was running for treasurer in 2002 he hit up a top J.P. Morgan official to co-chair a fundraising event. It wasn’t just an honorary position. The price tag for the co-chairmanship? $10,000.

According to the report, the official didn’t co-chair the event but donated $1,000 to Angelides” campaign personally ­– and helped raise $8,000 more. In asking other J.P. Morgan brass to contribute to Angelides, the official noted that that the state of California was an important client for the firm.

Just how important became clear in the next couple of years, when J.P Morgan received about $37 million in fees from the state on more than 50 bond offerings totaling $15.8 billion – overseen by Angelides as state treasurer.

In the SEC’s curious take on the matter, neither Angelides nor J.P. Morgan is accused of doing anything improper.  Angelides isn’t even mentioned by name. The agency merely uses its report to caution finance officials about not running afoul of SEC regulations.

OK, so the SEC doesn’t think Angelides did anything wrong soliciting funds from J.P. Morgan and then giving them the state's business. But the report serves as a bitter reminder that those who we’re counting on to get to the bottom of the financial meltdown are steeped in the toxic brew of cash and politics that has seeped into the core of our government.

I hope I’m proven wrong about Angelides; that his intimacy with this unseemly world has left him with a sense of sustained outrage and not empathy for it.  But it will take more than a few zingers to convince me. I mean, let’s be serious. Would Ferdinand Pecora have solicited money from J.P Morgan? Not much chance. After Pecora grilled the son of the legendary banker, J.P. Morgan, Jr. described the investigator as having “the manners of an assistant prosecuting attorney who is trying to convict a horse thief.”

Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission / Martin Column - 03/23/2010