Bill Black, UMKC prof, breathes fire at banking hearing on Capitol Hill

Everybody is mad as hell that big investment banks put the country on the brink of economic ruin. Few people get a chance to vent in front of Congress.

Bill Black, a law and economics professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, appeared before the House Financial Services Committee last month. The subject was the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers.

Black worked as a regulator during the savings-and-loan crisis. As an official at the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, he sat in on a meeting with a group of U.S. senators as they tried to beautify Charles Keating Jr., a corrupt, craggy financier who had donated richly to their campaigns. The senators, a group that included John McCain, came to be known as the Keating Five.