Democrats just elected Maxine Waters to the top Democratic spot on the House Financial Services committee.
This is really an extraordinary development. "Flabbergasting" might be a more apt word. Leave aside the recent ethics investigation over whether she used her position on the committee to help a bank her husband was involved with (which ended with her chief of staff getting reprimanded). Maxine Waters reliably delivers the craziest questions and the most bizarre speeches on that committee, and tends to demonstrate a stunning lack of grasp of the committee's core subject matter.
The classic of the her oeuvre is, of course, the committee hearing on the financial crisis, in which eight heads of major financial institutions like Citi, State Street, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley were pretty ruthlessly grilled by members of Congress about how they had gotten the economy into the largest catastrophe since the Great Depression, and the greatest capital loss in history.
What follows would be hilarious if it were not coming from someone who could become one of the most powerful figures in financial regulation if the Democrats win back the House. In that light, it's damned scary stuff.
