Sen Chris Dodd (D–Conn.), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, on the financial meltdown:
The first week in February, we had our first hearing on the crisis of 2007, and it was on the mortgage crisis. We had witnesses who laid out exactly what was going to happen; in fact, they underestimated what would happen, and they were ridiculed for estimating what they did! And all that spring we went back and forth had meetings, we had a big gathering at the Banking Committee room with all the major players on mortgages. We had an awful time getting Hank Paulson to recognize anything. And Ben Bernanke, too. They’d come to meetings and they’d kind of have this blank stare, all during that spring, through that summer, into the fall.
Blank stares? Really? I can almost buy that with Paulson, but Bernanke? He obviously didn’t see the housing bubble in time, but whatever else you might think of the guy, he doesn’t really strike me as the blank stare type.
