Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act

I will say now that I'm frustrated. We have seen very little in the way of senior officer or boardroom-level prosecutions of the people on Wall Street who brought this country to the brink of financial ruin. Why is that?

In 1932 through 1934 the Senate Banking Committee, led by its Chief Counsel Ferdinand Pecora, ferreted out the deeper fraud and corruption that led to the Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. The Pecora Committee's findings helped change the political mood, and laid the groundwork for the sweeping financial reforms of Roosevelt's New Deal. President Obama has now signed legislation which, among other things, creates an investigative commission inspired by Pecora. The new Financial Markets Commission has a sweeping mandate, including subpoena powers, to investigate all the causes of the collapse. But whether the commission carries out this mandate will depend entirely on who its chair and members are, and whether they hire a tough staff.