The hearings for the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission are going on right now. Zachery Kouwe of the New York Times' blog Dealbook is "live-blogging" the hearing right now (how's that for an example of compound-transitive-verbing?!).
Meanwhile, today's NYT op-ed section has a nice survey of questions some experts would like to ask the bankers in the hearings. My favorites are from Simon Johnson of MIT and Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism:
—SIMON JOHNSON, a professor at the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management and a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics
—YVES SMITH, the head of Aurora Advisors, a management consulting firm, and the author of the blog Naked Capitalism and the forthcoming book "Econned: How Unenlightened Self-Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism"
Read the full list of questions.
Speaking of Yves Smith, she had some interesting things to say today about something that is looming behind today's hearings: the Obama administration's recent talk of levying some kind of tax/fine on the big banks--separate from the tax on transactions that many have been calling for, and from the idea of a special tax on bankers' bonuses. (A NYT editorial today (? or yesterday--I can't tell) came out in favor of the new tax/fine, but called for a tax on bonuses on top of that.) But according to Yves, the O. admin. will come out with a more concrete proposal today:
Obama to Announce $120 Billion TARP Fee
Read the rest of the post.
We will be on the lookout for the best analyses of and commentaries on the testimony in today's hearings. If you find something particularly cogent, let us know.