Chamber calls FCIC study a ‘missed opportunity’

“The failure of this commission to do its job is more bad news for workers and businesses who depend on robust, well-regulated, world-leading capital markets to fund growth and job creation,” said David Hirschmann, president and chief executive officer of the Chamber’s Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness.

The Chamber also accused the FCIC’s plan of posting raw documents, including information obtained from government agencies and private companies, of amounting to “a government-sanctioned WikiLeaks.”

Such a release “is an astounding abuse of process,” said Lisa Rickard, president of the Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform.

In a report spanning over 600 pages, the FCIC identified a range of causes of the financial crisis, ranging from failures of government regulators to rein in the private sector as it took on riskier investments to the heads of Wall Street firms for failing to recognize or acknowledge their extreme risk-taking.

In one dissent, three Republican commissioners said the official report was too broad, while failing to acknowledge the global aspects of the crisis. And in a separate dissent, Peter Wallison, a fellow of financial policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, laid blame primarily at the feet of U.S. housing policy as the ultimate culprit.