Two senators propose forensics lab to study Wall Street

Jim Galloway of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution called it “CSI: Wall Street.” It’s a nascent bipartisan effort by two U.S. senators, one of them Georgia’s Johnny Isakson, to do something beyond just bemoaning the smoking economic train wreck and haggling over responses. Isakson and Kent Conrad, D-N.D., want to find out what happened and why, and whose fingerprints might be on the missing trillions.

By Dusty Nix, Columbus Ledger-Enquirer — Feb 22, 2009

Galloway, in a column published in the AJC last month, called it “a can’t-miss crime-scene drama with a riveting story arc: Who done in the corpse that is now your 401(k)?”

Conrad and Isakson have proposed something to be modeled along the lines of the 9/11 Commission – complete with subpoena authority and the power to call pass evidence of malfeasance on to prosecutors. What they call the Financial Markets Commission would be a seven-member bipartisan panel, with two members appointed by the president and the other five appointed by the House speaker, House minority leader, Senate Democratic and Republican leaders and Federal Reserve chairman, respectively.

I say have at it.

One of the things they’d like to accomplish, as they explain in a statement available on Isakson’s Senate Web site, is making real reforms and achieving genuine justice beyond the predictable “ready, fire, aim” legislation that inevitably follows some great public outrage.

What you expect is a lot of righteous sound and fury, followed by some package of “reform” legislation loaded with tough-sounding laws that diligently protect the interests of every generous campaign contributor. What Conrad and Isakson want is to find out what happened, precisely and in detail; turn over evidence of criminal acts to the U.S. attorney general and/or the attorneys general of states where crimes may have been committed; and report to Congress and the president recommendations for legislative and/or regulatory reforms.

I say: have at it.

The one thing I really don’t want to see, in this rancid climate of empty “bipartisanship” lip service, when you expect the honorables at any moment to link hands and join in a chorus of “Kum Ba Ya” for the cameras before retiring to chambers and splitting along impregnable party lines on every issue that matters, is the Mark McGwire routine.

You remember McGwire – the former A’s and Cardinals slugger whose version of the Fifth Amendment when confronted with steroid allegations was: “I don’t want to talk about the past – I want to talk about the future.”

The political temptation, especially given some of the places where a real investigation could lead, would be to take refuge in something like that: Let’s not worry about whose fault it is, let’s just think about how to fix it, and bla bla bla.

Thus would gross incompetence, obscene greed and pure, remorseless larceny, responsible for the wreckage of millions of American lives, get a free pass – again.

Sorry. Not good enough.

I don’t want just a pound of flesh, but tons of it. I want some silk-suit thugs to sweat. I want to see some robber barons in orange jumpsuits and hear some cell doors clang shut. And yes, I want to see some legal and regulatory reforms in place that can halt some of this outrageous nonsense before it brings a few people’s houses of cards down on everybody else’s heads.

Have at it, Senators. Have at it.