Tomorrow the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission will send its majority report and two dissenting views to the President and the Congress.  One of those dissenting views comes from Vice Chairman Bill Thomas, Doug Holtz-Eakin, and me.  The other comes from Peter Wallison.  The majority conclusions are supported by the six Commissioners appointed by then-Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid: Chairman Phil Angelides, Brooksley Born, Byron Georgiou, Senator Bob Graham, Heather Murren, and John Thompson.

I will post our dissent here at KeithHennessey.com soon.  Doug will do the same at the American Action Forum.  Around 10 AM Thursday morning, all three documents will be posted on the FCIC website.

Until then, here is a Wall Street Journal op-ed that is online now and will appear in tomorrow’s print edition.  It’s by Mr. Thomas, Dr. Holtz-Eakin, and me, and it is a precis of our dissent.

If you have been following the Commission’s work, I think you will find that this op-ed and our 3-man dissent differ significantly from the document released by the four Republican appointees in December.  Please do not assume that you know what Thomas, Holtz-Eakin and I are going to say based on prior press coverage or a reading of that December document.  This is quite different.

Stay tuned for a lot more here on this topic over the next few days.  While I will send at most one email per day to my mailing list (as promised), I anticipate posting several times on Thursday, and maybe more over the next few days, as I try to respond to initial feedback and press coverage.  If you are tracking this issue closely, please check back or subscribe to the RSS feed for timely updates.

For now, here are two initial press stories, as well as our op-ed.  Happy reading.  Our full dissent is coming soon.

• Reuters:  FACTBOX – GOP report cites 10 causes for US financial crisis (by Kevin Drawbaugh and Dave Clarke)
• NY Times: Dissenters Fault Report on Crisis in Finance (by Sewell Chan)

Wall Street Journal op-ed:  What Caused the Financial Crisis? (by Bill Thomas, Keith Hennessey, and Douglas Holtz-Eakin)

What Caused the Financial Crisis?

Congress’s inquiry commission is offering a simplistic narrative that could lead to the wrong policy reforms.

By BILL THOMAS, KEITH HENNESSEY
AND DOUGLAS HOLTZ-EAKIN

Today, six members of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission—created by the last […]