Today Richard Shelby of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the
Senate Banking Committee, ripped Chris Dodd's financial
regualation overhaul proposal. Shelby warned that "This committee
has not done the necessary work to even begin discussing changes
of this magnitude," and, according
to the Wall Street Journal, recommended a thorugh
investigation along the lines of the Great Depression's Pecora
Investigation.
In 1933, Ferdinand Pecora became the chief counsel for the Senate
Banking Committee's investigations into the stock market crash of
1929. He spearheaded an exhaustive, multi-year search into the
crash's causes that helped shape many New Deal regulations and
provided most of the data for later histories of the Depression.
The New York Times published a new look at the Pecora
Investigation in January, and it's worth
a reread.
(An aside: if you click through to the Times article,
take a look at their picture of Pecora... one wonders if the
Times meant to display that particular image.)
