AIG Hearings

I'm watching the House hearings on AIG on C-SPAN 3 (somebody has to). So far the representatives are giving opening statements, about 40 mins so far. They are all just reading prepared statements. Barney Frank (D-MA) is the one exception, he's the only one who is apparently knowledgeable enough to speak extemporaneously on the topic.

The common GOP refrain seems to be, we wouldn't have this problem if we hadn't bailed out AIG. This issue is the rationale why government shouldn't be involved. Of course if we hadn't bailed out AIG we would have had other bigger problems. And really, if you think government can't be effective, why are you in it.

The one bit of fun at this point was Rep Scott Garrett (R-NJ 5th, Paramus, Newton) the ranking minority member on the committee who complained that he sent a letter to chairman Frank demanding hearings on "how the Fed was putting American taxpayers at risk in such financial institutions. But it took him over 3 months to schedule one."

Frank replied that yes Mr. Garrett asked for the hearing. There were a number of other legislative things going on at the time and the hearing was held in July 2008. He checked the transcript and at the hearing Mr. Garrett asked no questions about this program. He did ask a question about "covered bonds" but that's it. "I suppose I understand he's disturbed that we didn't give him a chance not to ask any questions a month earlier but I am unconvinced that that would have made any difference."

Update: Frank came back later and apologized. Apparently the official transcript is incorrect. It cut off the questioning. He began with covered bonds and then got to this topic.