The finger pointing in Washington Wednesday went all the way to the top far beyond the penthouse executive office or the White House into the metaphysical.
The Washington Post reported an exchange between Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs, and Philip Angelides, chair of the bipartisan Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission included Blankfein's metaphor of the financial crisis as a calamity as likely as four hurricanes hitting the same place in one year.
Angelides, who ran for governor of California losing to Arnold Schwarzenegger, thought the metaphor was inaccurate.
"Acts of God, we'll exempt," he said. "These were acts of men and women. They were controllable."
It was Blankfein's second public faux pas concerning the Chief Executive in the Sky. In November, he was quoted in The Times of London as saying Goldman Sachs -- or bankers in general -- were "doing God's work," a comment for which he later apologized.
Be that as it may, the official hunt for answers began Wednesday with testimony from four of the nation's top bankers, including Morgan Stanley's John Mack, Bank of America's Brian Moynihan and JPMorgan Chase executive Jamie Dimon.
The three and a half hour session, which broke before lunch, may not come up with a two-line answer to how the financial crisis occurred, but may have repercussions far beyond its final report. In an exchange that could point to the need for a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, Blankfein told the panel the best bank customer was an educated one. If so, that would seem to require educating customers -- and who is going to do that?
"It sounds to me a little bit like selling a car with faulty brakes and then buying an insurance policy on the buyer of those cars," Angelides told Blankfein.
Similarly, it may be tough to figure how the bankers' admission that bailout funds helped their firms' profitability plays out with government efforts to placate the public's anger over huge bonus checks. It may sound like humility to admit taxpayers helped or it may sound like justification for the White House to remain vigilant about $10 million paychecks or to impost a fee on banks to recoup losses on bailout programs.
At that, for every explanation of credit default swaps, there is a politician willing to point to the retired police officer whose pension was cut, despite the fact he has never been near Wall Street.
After the hearing, Angelides told reporters, Goldman Sachs had not vetted their own products properly. "Mr. Blankfein himself never admitted that there was any responsibility of Goldman Sachs to make sure the products themselves were good products. That's very troublesome," Angelides said.
In market movement Thursday, the Nikkei 225 index in Japan rose 1.61 percent, while the Shanghai composite index in China added 1.35 percent. The Hang Seng index in Hong Kong fell 0.15 percent, while the Sensex in India rose 0.43 percent.
In midday trading in Europe, the FTSE 100 in Britain rose 0.34 percent, while the DAX 30 in Germany gained 0.34 percent. The CAC 40 in France added 0.31 percent, while the pan-European DJ Stoxx 50 rose 0.44 percent.
