The members of this panel of sorts included the
chief executives of Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, State
Street, Morgan Stanley, Bank of New York Mellon, Wells Fargo and Chase.
Probably the fiercest forayer of the day was Massachusetts' 8th
District's own Representative Michael Capuano. He was in classic form,
berating these executives with his allotted five minutes to speak.

First,
he asked how many of these executives engaged in dangerous, and
possibly illegal actions such as Credit Default Swaps, Collateralized
Debt Obligations, and Structured Investment Vehicles. Representative
Capuano asked, "How many of your banks had or currently have Special
Investment Vehicles, those off the books and somehow unregulated
subsidiaries of the bank or sister corporations?" To this, several
CEO's in front of him raised their hands to admit engaging in these
actions. Capuano answered back sharply, stating that, "So basically,
all or most of you engaged in all or at least some of the activities
that created this crisis in my opinion, because everyone of those
activities, especially the SIV's, to me, I think they're illegal."

He
went on to state "I can't believe no one has been prosecuted on this.
But then again, we haven't had any prosecutorial action whatsoever with
the last administration and the new administration has a little time to
figure this out, we'll find out whether anybody really cares."

Credit
Default Swaps, Collateralized Debt Obligations and Structured
Investment Vehicles are all forms of asset-backed securities – they are
intricate bank transactions that entail borrowing and lending to turn a
profit, one of the most basic functions of banks, but in this case the
risk is high because of the way they work. For example, Structured
Investment Vehicles work by borrowing money for a shorter period of
time at a low rate of interest, and lending money for a longer term at
a higher rate of interest. With the sparse amount of stability in both
major and minor companies today, this puts the parties capitalizing off
of these Special Investment Vehicles and those on the other end at risk
of taking major losses.

Representative Capuano continued on,
abashing the CEO's for the poor decisions they had made. Some of the
more quote-worthy statements included, "Basically, you come to us today
on your bicycles, after buying girl-scout cookies and helping out
Mother Theresa, telling us 'we're sorry, we didn't mean it, we won't do
it again, trust us.' Well, I have some people in my constituency who
actually robbed your banks that say the same thing…do you understand
that this is a little difficult for most of my constituents to take,
that you learned your lesson?"

In a classic Capuano style, the
statements reached a climax of intensity when the Representative began
to point and yell directly at the CEO's: "you created SIV's, you
created CDO's, you created Credit Default Swaps, you created the mess
we're in, and now you're saying you're sorry, trust us, we don't even
want the money. Interesting, no one has ever come to me telling me I
had to take billions of dollars."

He then expressed his
disappointment in the CEO's: "America doesn't trust you anymore…I
don't have one single penny in any of your banks, not one, because I
don't want my money going toward CDO's and Credit Default Swaps and
making huge bonuses…start loaning the money that we gave you, get it
on the street. And don't tell me we're not using that money for
bonuses, come on!"