An Anti-Climactic Death Scene on Capitol Hill

Matt Taibbi's short take on the theatrical possibilities of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Hearing on Wednesday:

I turned around and saw that sitting behind me was Joe Cassano, the patient zero of the financial crisis — the former AIG executive who nearly blew up the universe by issuing half a trillion dollars worth of credit default swaps without having any money to back it up. Nobody has really seen Cassano since AIG imploded in 2008; he's been in semi-hiding in London, as far as anyone knows, keeping clear of any wayward pitchforks I suppose. Being that he's been transformed into sort of a mythical creature in the financial crisis story it was surreal seeing him sit there in the flesh, like turning around in a diner and seeing the Headless Horseman eating a tuna melt.

...Cassano's testimony turned out to be brilliant comedy — it turns out, according to him, that he did a pretty good job and his risk management skills were top-notch! I kept waiting for some sort of cosmic Hand of Justice to reach into the hearing room (a la the climactic death scene in Mozart's Don Giovanni), snatch Cassano up in the middle of one of his mumbling self-congratulatory responses, and then pull him kicking and screaming straight through the floor into the furnace of hell — but it never happened. In fact he barely even took much heat from the panel. In that sense, a very disappointing afternoon.