The Goldman Sachs Hearings and the Finance Reform Bill

This seems to me a strange account of what we saw yesterday at the Goldman Sachs hearings, particularly to run in the Times’ Business section, the readers of which, presumably, have some familiarity with the fact that 1. yes, there were hearings and 2. they were weird hearings! And it seems so odd that they keep calling the testifying Goldman staff “officials,” though I suppose it’s technically accurate. (They are department heads in a corporation.) The Times wrote: “Steering away from financial jargon, the senators tried to put a human face on the questioning. Senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada, declared that more transparency was needed ‘so we don’t end up hurting the little guys out there on Main Street.’” Taking that blundering lame newsbite as piece of meaningful speech-even while it was more reasonable than the bizarre utterances of pale old John McCain-seems to me to be the weirdest bit I’ve read in that paper since Monday!

For, on Monday, this was written, regarding Gizmodo and the missing/stolen new iPhone: “Some media writers have said that Gawker Media could find itself in legal trouble if the phone was classified as stolen.” I mean, LOL, relevance? If there’s a category of people other than media writers who are less reliable authorities on the law, please let me know.

In any event! This Wall Street Journal account seems more reasonable as a description of what happened yesterday.

And what this all makes me realize is that I have not done my duty as an American and read the Restoring American Financial Stability Act, S.3217, introduced by Chris Dodd, and commonly called the “Finance Reform Bill” or whatever. Today it will go to its third vote to be voted upon. (Republicans succeeded fantastically in blocking health care reform, getting that bill watered down significantly, and presumably they are trying to do that again.) Possibly the Democrats learned a lesson from that experience and it won’t happen again! Possibly.

It is pretty amazing that blocking debate on a bill is the new voting against a bill though. But hey, this is America, where apparently everything is about elections. Pretty disgusting!

Have you read this bill though? It’s, like, really long and complicated! Any quick review indicates that very little of it, with the exception of Title X, the creation of a “Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection,” has anything to do with “the little guys out there on Main Street.” Even the title about “investor protection” has to do with “retail investors.” But we’ll hear more posturing about the Average American later today. Stay tuned, if you can bear it.