We Must Not Speak Uncomfortable Truths to Power: Why I Won’t be Briefing Congress about Derivatives

Posted on May 29, 2012 by Mitch Green | 

By William K. Black
When I was the Deputy Director of FSLIC, House Banking Committee Chairman St Germain was helping Speaker Wright hold the FSLIC recapitalization bill hostage to extort favors for Texas control frauds, including Don Dixon’s Vernon Savings (which was providing prostitutes to the State of Texas’ top S&L regulator and was building towards having 96% of its ADC loans in default – which is why we referred to it as “Vermin”). The attack on our agency was that we were mad dogs biased against Texas S&Ls and causing the Texas crisis by closing too many insolvent but well-run Texas S&Ls. Our response had many elements, but one of our principal points was that the Texas S&Ls we were closing were typically control frauds. At this juncture, St Germain’s staffers made a mistake. They requested that we testify on a host of issues, but the invite letter had a zinger, premised on an article saying that the Feds were slow to prosecute frauds in the Southwest. The invite specifically called for us to respond and discuss the role of fraud in the Southwest. We used the opportunity to explain the extensive role of fraud in Texas S&L failures.

The day of the hearing, I walked toward the witness table, but was called over by St Germain’s chief of staff. He proceeded to disinvite us from testifying on the grounds that we had filed non-responsive testimony. (We had, of course, responded to every inquiry they made. They simply hated the response because we documented the enormous role that control fraud was playing in causing Texas S&Ls to fail.)
Today, I received definitive word that I had been disinvited from a bipartisan briefing of members of Congress on the subject of financial derivatives. I have deleted the name of the staffer because he is not the issue. The relevant email thread is below.
The member of Congress putting the event together is one of the strongest advocates of the need for banking reform. I have assisted the Member’s staff in the past in such efforts. The Member’s chief of staff called me today. His position is that I was never invited to participate and that it was unfortunate that I booked the flights and put UMKC on the hook for the non-refundable fares and hotel before informing his office that I was accepting their inquiry about participation (as opposed to invitation). He explains that it is impossible physically to have me participate and that the decision not to have me participate has nothing to do with concerns about “balance” or “bank bashing.” I emphasize also that, unlike St Germain’s disinvitation the email thread states an interest in inviting me to speak at future briefings. I hope that such invitations will be made. The Member and the Member’s staff were polite while St Germain’s chief of staff was deliberately rude.
Nevertheless, I think that the Chief of Staff’s phone call to me explaining their view that I was never invited makes my point. We all know that is simple to add a panelist. What is really going on is that things are so toxic in Congress now, and the largest banks are so sensitive to any criticism, that the progressives fear that any criticism of bank practices that will cause the next financial crisis will be considered “bank bashing” and will cause Republicans to be unwilling to participate. The fact that I have a 30 year record of non-partisan service to the nation on banking matters, including service as a banker with the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, does not count in such a world. We must not speak uncomfortable truths to power. You will see that it is his staff that informed me that the concerns that prevented me from joining the panel were maintaining a “consensus” about the panel’s “balance” and avoiding “bank bashing.”
I remain supportive, of course, of members of Congress reaching out and getting facts about our financial system, so I hope that the Member’s efforts to create a series of bipartisan briefings succeed. Self-censorship, however, is most debilitating form of censorship. A “consensus” that seeks to minimize any criticism of the “too big to fail” banks on the grounds that criticism equates to “bank bashing” is a consensus to play ostrich.