Serious questions are being asked by serious people: Andrew Ross Sorkin of Dealbook at the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/business/12sorkin.html ; Eliot Spitzer, Frank Partnoy, and William Black at Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eliot-spitzer/ask-the-bankers_b_420394.html#ask; Mike Konczal at New Deal 2.0: http://www.newdeal20.org/?p=7425&cpage=1#comment-3666 to name just a few.
What kind of answers are we going to get?
If you hadn’t already read the essay “The True Answer and the Right Answer” from Stanley Fish’s blog Opinionator http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/the-true-answer-and-the-right-answer/ , you need advanced graduate degrees in logic or familiarity with Tarskian gymnastics to tell which is “true” and which is “right.”
Under those circumstances, I thought a little lite question to enliven the hearing might be in order, like adding a little fizz to the gin and the tonic.
Distinguished Gentleman Bankers: Look to the colleague banker next to you, to your left or to your right, look carefully and estimate the sum-total cost of your colleague’s haircut, his tie, his shirt, his suit, his shoes, and his watch, and multiply that number by 40 in your heads, and tell me what it is.
I have a number in mind. If your number exceeds my number, you win the prize behind the door named “Bernie”; if your number does not exceed my number, you get the prize behind the door named “Pitch Fork.” Numbers and risk management experts that you all are, you shouldn’t need more than 10 seconds to get at your number.
Now, let’s go gentlemen, add your numbers up!
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