Academic

The Financial Crisis Commission begins its hearings tomorrow. In the Times, Andrew Sorkin solicits ideas for questions.  I couldn?t think of many pithy, prosecutorial questions, other than ?Are you now, or have you ever been, an employee of Goldman Sachs??

Quite seriously, though, it would pay to ask Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein and Hank Paulson about their conversations on the eve of the AIG bailout, an entity of which Goldman was a creditor. Or maybe I read too much Rolling Stone.

Part of why I can?t think of questions is that I was a transactional lawyer, not a litigator. Part of it, is that I hope ? likely in vain ? that this inquiry will be more about learning lessons to design good policy and less about bad political melodrama. Here is what I think we do need from the inquiry:

(1) an autopsy of Bear, Lehman, AIG, Freddie, and Fannie, and

(2) an accounting of where all the money from the Fed?s alphabet soup of crisis management facilities has gone.

The second item is a political and economic minefield: it is critical that we have a retrospective understanding of what the systemic threat was and an accounting of where the money went. But it would be absolutely disastrous to give Congress oversight of monetary policy.

Can this needle be threaded?

What questions would you ask, Glom readers?