During yesterday's grilling of former Citigroup Executives Bob Rubin and Chuch Prince, Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Vice Chair Bill Thomas went on an extensive tirade about the political situation in the early 1990s, one that Noam Scheiber calls "one of the most breathtaking spectacles I've ever observed in a congressional committee room." The rant had very little to do with anything relevant and points to a serious problem with the committee's work. (Were you following my live-tweets?)It looks increasingly like the value of the FCIC is going to come from whatever is revealed in testimony and, perhaps more important, whatever documents they can collect. (Yesterday's witnesses dodged several potentially damning questions by pretending to be confused and offering to send in their answers at a later date.) Their final report, though, may be too marred by partisan bickering to provide much clarity on the crisis, though I hope I'm wrong. You certainly didn't see incidents like this during the 9/11 Commission's hearings.
This problem comes with the political atmosphere, but it's also an issue of expertise. It's no question that the better questioners on the commission are those with specifically financial backgrounds, like Chairman Phil Angelides or conservative economist Doug Holtz-Eakin, but Thomas, despite his years in Congress, can't really match them. Especially if they're more interested in disputing what is, at this point, ancient political history, rather than dealing with the various serious problems in front of them.
-- Tim Fernholz
