By John D. McKinnon
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission wraps up its Washington hearing schedule on Wednesday and Thursday, when it will take a look at how the government decided which financial institutions would live during the 2008 meltdown, and which ones would die.
This time, the commission is focusing on Lehman Brothers, which sunk into bankruptcy in 2008, and Wachovia Corp., which bank regulators were willing to help out. It eventually survived the turmoil of 2008.
Eventually, of course, a whole range of Wall Street banking firms were deemed to be too important to fail, and were buttressed by the Troubled Asset Relief Program. But the Lehman and Wachovia narratives could shed further light on how government regulators approachedd their tasks during the meltdown. Lehman went down in mid-September 2008, while Wachovia was courted by troubled Citigroup but eventually was taken over by Wells Fargo a few weeks later.
Wednesday’s witnesses will include Robert Steel, a former Wachovia CEO and former top Treasury official, and Richard Fuld, former Lehman CEO. On Thursday, the panel will hear testimony from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, and Sheila Bair, the chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
The FCIC was formed by Congress last year to examine the causes of the financial crisis. It’s expected to complete its report in December. While its Washington hearings are wrapping up, it also plans a series of field hearings in California, Nevada and Florida.
I pray that the panel has the courage to ask Chairman Bair about the hatchet job that was WaMu. Wiping out shareholders and bondholders alike, freezing lending, and literally gifting hundreds of billions of assets to JPM…all of which has gone unnoticed by the media and the public alike (but not the courts thank goodness).
The largest bank theft in history.