The Senate will miss Carl Levin ... and so should you
The Senate’s Muckraker
By JOE NOCERA, NYT
I’ll miss Carl Levin when he leaves the Senate after the next election — and you will, too.
At 78, Levin has represented Michigan in the United States Senate for 34 years. He has certainly earned the right to retire on his own terms. But as a longtime Democratic member of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations — and as its chairman since 2007 — Levin has done more than anyone to expose the scams, the conflicts, the wrongdoing and the sheer idiocy of the financial industry from the run-up to the financial crisis to the present day. Every time Levin’s subcommittee holds a hearing, it should shame Attorney General Eric “Too Big to Jail” Holder Jr.
The subcommittee’s most recent exposé took place on Friday, when it held a hearing to explore the infamous “London Whale” trades that cost JPMorgan Chase $6 billion last year. Months earlier, the Senate Banking Committee, whose members lean on the big banks for major campaign contributions, held its own inquiry into the disastrous trades. There, JPMorgan’s chief executive, Jamie Dimon, was treated more like a visiting dignitary than a committee witness. Senator Charles Schumer of New York, unctuously describing Dimon as “a financial expert,” asked him to gauge the “danger of this kind of thing happening at other institutions not as well-capitalized as JPMorgan.” Pathetic.
Levin and John McCain, the permanent subcommittee’s ranking minority member, didn’t even bother to invite Dimon. “We wanted to speak to the people who had the most information,” Levin told me. Thus, the subcommittee’s witnesses included Ina Drew, who led the division that oversaw the London traders, and Douglas Braunstein, who was the bank’s chief financial officer. The combination of Levin’s tough questions and a 300-page report by the subcommittee’s investigators was brutal. The bank, and Dimon, took a major reputational hit.
(More here.)
I’ll miss Carl Levin when he leaves the Senate after the next election — and you will, too.
At 78, Levin has represented Michigan in the United States Senate for 34 years. He has certainly earned the right to retire on his own terms. But as a longtime Democratic member of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations — and as its chairman since 2007 — Levin has done more than anyone to expose the scams, the conflicts, the wrongdoing and the sheer idiocy of the financial industry from the run-up to the financial crisis to the present day. Every time Levin’s subcommittee holds a hearing, it should shame Attorney General Eric “Too Big to Jail” Holder Jr.
The subcommittee’s most recent exposé took place on Friday, when it held a hearing to explore the infamous “London Whale” trades that cost JPMorgan Chase $6 billion last year. Months earlier, the Senate Banking Committee, whose members lean on the big banks for major campaign contributions, held its own inquiry into the disastrous trades. There, JPMorgan’s chief executive, Jamie Dimon, was treated more like a visiting dignitary than a committee witness. Senator Charles Schumer of New York, unctuously describing Dimon as “a financial expert,” asked him to gauge the “danger of this kind of thing happening at other institutions not as well-capitalized as JPMorgan.” Pathetic.
Levin and John McCain, the permanent subcommittee’s ranking minority member, didn’t even bother to invite Dimon. “We wanted to speak to the people who had the most information,” Levin told me. Thus, the subcommittee’s witnesses included Ina Drew, who led the division that oversaw the London traders, and Douglas Braunstein, who was the bank’s chief financial officer. The combination of Levin’s tough questions and a 300-page report by the subcommittee’s investigators was brutal. The bank, and Dimon, took a major reputational hit.
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
The politicians blather and the taxpayers will still be on the hook for banker/politician/Obama administration's bad decisions.
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