Maybe Congress is getting just a wee bit of a non-partisan message. House Speaker Pelosi is calling for an investigative commission on Wall Street irregularities (I thought it was business as usual!), due to Populist outrage (Congress hears the people?):

Pelosi, speaking to the Commonwealth Club of California, said she wants the panel to be modeled after the Pecora Commission, a bipartisan investigative body established by the U.S. Senate in 1932 to examine the causes and abuses of the Wall Street crash of 1929 and to prevent a repeat.

"They investigated what happened in the markets," including conflicts of interests and irregularities that set off such devastating effects on the U.S. economy, she said. When the commission issued its findings during the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, "they had tangible recommendations," she said, which helped generate widespread public support for major banking system reforms and new securities laws.

Pelosi said she discussed the matter with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Wednesday and will raise the matter with her colleagues in the House of Representatives next week. She said her actions have been sparked by the observation that, no matter where she travels in the United States, she hears concern about financial irregularities.

There is actually a bill introduced already, H.R. 768, Commission on Financial Crisis Accountability Act of 2009 to start an investigation.

The problem with this bill is it's partisan and the Speakers of the House and Senate, as well as the Minority Leaders select members to be on the panel. In the bill text are 6 Democrats to 4 Republicans and only Congressional leadership is doing the selecting.

This explains why there are only 23 cosponsors on this bill.

They need an outside group, experts in finance, whistle blowers. People along the lines of Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren, Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Simon Johnson, Bill Isaac, with a a balance of economic viewpoints.

Experts who are based in ethics, Academic integrity, honesty. If one expects to obtain any real reforms in the public interest, one must have commission members who have no vested political agenda or special interest motives to shine upon the complex web of economic fiction... the light of day. Yet another partisan gaming commission will assuredly end up being just that.