Thursday, February 19, 2009

Barney Frank Disrupted Kanjorski Questioning of Paulson and Bernanke About Run On Money Market Funds

A commenter "99" has added this interesting item to my story about a run on money markets that nearly crashed the entire financial system, Government Panic of 2008,:

I've been tearing my hair out about this, and the horrific conspiracy theories arising out of Kanjorski's statements on C-SPAN, for a week... having to go so far as to give myself a big headache listening to the entire hearing where Bernanke and Paulson testified before the House Finance Subcommittee on 24 September. Kanjorski brought up the run in that hearing and Paulson and Bernanke were trying to respond to it, but Franks broke in about members having to get to a vote in ten minutes and no full discussion of the run ensued after the outburst/break-in by Franks. I have been wondering if that was a purposeful attempt to cut off the line of questioning, or just bad luck.
I've seen both House and Senate hearings stopped before for votes, so it would take a real insider to detect if there was anything odd about the way Frank handled this one. Anyone out there familiar enough with House procedures to comment on Frank's interruption?

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