Why do we even bother with this nonsense:
Almost three years after Citigroup started to teeter, two of the executives who guided the bank into the center of the financial storm offered their regrets on Thursday to a federal committee examining the crisis and came under withering criticism from panel members.
Charles O. Prince III, Citigroup’s former chairman and chief executive, apologized for the billions of dollars of losses that caused the company he helped build to nearly collapse. Instead, the bank required three government rescues and some $45 billion in taxpayer aid.
“I’m sorry the financial crisis has had such a devastating impact for our country,” Mr. Prince told the commission. “I’m sorry about the millions of people, average Americans, who lost their homes. And I’m sorry that our management team, starting with me, like so many others could not see the unprecedented market collapse that lay before us.”
Robert E. Rubin, an influential Citigroup board member and adviser, also showed some contritionbut stopped short of accepting personal responsibility for the bank’s woes.
“We all bear responsibility for not recognizing this, and I deeply regret that,” Mr. Rubin said.
The congresscritters all act pissed off, the banksters act mostly contrite, and then we all agree that “mistakes were made” and “no one could have predicted,” while the same pricks are handing each other buckets of cash behind the scenes to avoid any regulation and the people who did predict this stuff aren’t invited to the hearings.
Congressional oversight hearings are like a show trial where everyone agrees all parties are guilty but no one ever gets executed. WTF is the point?