The other day I called the White House and Capitol Hill's attempt at financial reform a farce. 

Well, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission the theater of the absurd.  As Andrew Cockburn described it: "Once they opted for  “crisis” rather than “crimes” we knew it was all over."

No wonder Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, Charles Prince's testimony before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission consisted  mainly of avoiding and denying any responsibility for their crooked actions.  These financial gurus pretended they were innocent bystanders.

Now Zach Carter weighs in at Our Future highlighting another prevaricating player in the financial debacle.

"The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission hearings continue to be a boring mess, peppered with a few moments of significant insight. Throughout most of yesterday's hearing featuring the nation's top bank regulator, Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan, Commissioners treated their witness as a credible expert, rather than a culpable catalyst of the crash.

"You'd never know it from Dugan's calm, mousey demeanor before the FCIC, but he spent several years working as a high-powered bank lobbyist before being appointed to his current job by George W. Bush in 2005. Since then, he's been a major defender of big banks, pushing to defang consumer protection regulations and provide legal cover for subprime predators.

"Nobody on the Commission ever pressed Dugan on his lobbyist background. Who he lobbied for, what he lobbied for, and how much he got paid were never under discussion. Nobody asked him why he's been receiving lobbying talking points from major bank executives in secret during the debate over financial reform. Nobody asked him what sort of job he's likely to take after his term as Comptroller expires in August. This is a tremendous problem: Wall Street's political influence is so tremendous that they can secure top-level regulatory jobs for their own lobbyists. It's as if someone appointed Phrma lobbyist Billy Tauzin head of the FDA.

"And in Dugan's warped history of the past decade, both he and the banks he regulates never really did anything wrong. " 'We made very clear that predatory lending . . . was not something we would tolerate,'  Dugan said. 'Honestly, those practices never really took root.'

"This astounding claim is impossible to square with any credible account of the explosion in subprime lending over the past decade, an explosion in which Dugan's banks were some of the top players....

"But the gravest sin committed by Dugan's agency, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), was an aggressive effort to block state regulators from enforcing consumer protection laws against big banks....

"People like John Dugan should never be put in charge of bank regulation, but he isn't the only person to screw things up at the OCC. The agency has two duties—one is to protect consumers, the other to make sure that banks don't fail. In practice, this second duty (combined with a desire to attract big banks and their tax revenue) leads the OCC to defend anything that results in short-term profits for banks."

Where is the anger at these Reaganites, Bushites and Clintonites for their crimes?

And the Obama administration and the Democrats on Capitol Hill dare to call the financial disaster only a crisis rather than a crime.

Tens of millions of regular Americans are jobless, have lost their houses, and/or just struggling to stay afloat and too busy trying to make ends to express their outrage by banging those pots and pans in organized demonstrations.

Meanwhile, they're offered the spectacle of a mediocre commission rather than a tough, probing commission that seems only to be providing a platform for thieves and a fox guarding the hen house "expert" witness to blatantly lie.   These crooks should all be in the dock for their complicity in helping to cause economic disaster but instead were rewarded for their crimes by the Bush and Obama administrations both filled with revolving door financial industry alumni and their protectors.

No change, no fresh air,  just the same old stuff as economic injustice continues to grow stronger; as Warren Buffet explained it class warfare, and his class, the rich, were making war and winning.