Courtesy of Pam Martens
Wall Street Bank CEOs at House Hearing, February 11, 2009 in the Midst of the Epic Financial Crisis
By Pam Martens
The House Financial Services Committee, chaired by Democrat Maxine Waters, has announced a hearing scheduled for 9:00 a.m. on Wednesday, April 10, titled Holding Megabanks Accountable: A Review of Global Systemically Important Banks 10 Years after the Financial Crisis.
The title of the hearing is certain to bring sweat to the brows of the CEOs of the five largest Wall Street banks that still hold monster amounts of derivatives: JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley.
Have the CEOs of the mega banks agreed to testify or have they offered up a subordinate to launch a charm offensive at the hearing? Or will it simply be progressive academics opining on how dangerous the banks remain or Koch-funded think tanks arguing for more deregulation of the bloated behemoths? Details on who will testify have not yet been provided.
There’s no longer any question or debate as to what needs to be put under a microscope at this hearing. That debate ended last Friday when the Federal regulator of national banks, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), released its quarterly report for the fourth quarter of last year. The data clearly demonstrated how little progress has been made in reducing the dangers the Wall Street banks pose to the U.S. economy since the passage of the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation in 2010. It also showed that the banks are still gambling inside their federally-insured depository banks, thus putting taxpayers at risk for another epic bailout.
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