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of all the Commission’s work. Th e Commission members did not get together to
discuss or decide on the causes of the fi nancial crisis until July, 2010, well aft er it was
too late to direct the activities of the staff . Th e Commission interviewed hundreds of
witnesses, and the majority’s report is full of statements such as “Smith told the FCIC
that….” However, unless the meeting was public, the commissioners were not told
that an interview would occur, did not know who was being interviewed, were not
encouraged to attend, and of course did not have an opportunity to question these
sources or understand the contexts in which the quoted statements were made. Th e
Commission majority’s report uses these opinions as substitutes for data, which is
notably lacking in their report; opinions in general are not worth much, especially
in hindsight and when given without opportunity for challenge.
Th e Commission’s authorizing statute required that the Commission report
on or before December 15, 2010. Th e original plan was for us to start seeing draft s
of the report in April. We didn’t see any draft s until November. We were then given
an opportunity to submit comments in writing, but never had an opportunity to go
over the wording as a group or to know whether our comments were accepted. We
received a complete copy of the majority’s report, for the fi rst time, on December 15.
It was almost 900 double-spaced pages long. Th e date for approval of the report was
eight days later, on December 23. Th at is not the way to achieve a bipartisan report,
or the full agreement of any group that takes the issues seriously.
Th is dissenting statement is organized as follows: Part I summarizes the main
points of the dissent. Part II describes how the failure of subprime and other high
risk mortgages drove the growth of the bubble and weakened fi nancial institutions
around the world when these mortgages began to default. Part III outlines in detail
the housing policies of the U.S. government that were primarily responsible for the
fact that approximately one half of all U.S. mortgages in 2007 were subprime or
otherwise of low quality. Part IV is a brief conclusion.