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Washington. A US government panel’s failure to reach a firm conclusion about what caused the financial crisis shows how complex Wall Street has become and how partisan Washington has grown.

The haziness of its report comes months after a new law began tightening financial rules to prevent another crisis.

All of which raises a question: Do the findings of Thursday’s 633-page report matter?

In its report, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission blames a range of obvious culprits: Banks that made reckless bets. Credit rating agencies that endorsed risky mortgage bonds. Government regulators who overlooked danger signs until they threatened the global financial system.

It concludes that the crisis might have been prevented if banks had been more careful and regulators had asked tougher questions.

Those views have long since become mainstream in the more than two years since the crisis peaked. Yet among panel members, they sowed dissension. In the end, the commission’s six Democratic appointees embraced its conclusions. The four named by Republicans did not. Instead they offered their own reasons for the crisis — and three complained that the majority’s conclusions were too broad.

The absence of a sharp and unifying message dulls the report’s impact, analysts say.

“If only one side is picking and pulling different facts and trying to weave them into a narrative, you don’t end up with a cohesive final product that’s useful in policy making,” said Paul Atkins, a former member of the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

He said the report’s conclusions are also too generic to help steer regulators who have been writing rules for the financial overhaul law passed last July.

The crisis panel has been likened to the Pecora Commission, which investigated the cause of the 1929 stock market crash. It’s also drawn comparisons to the independent panel that investigated the September 2001 terrorist attacks. Yet those reports were more influential than the financial crisis report is likely to be.

The financial crisis report “is either too late or it’s too early,” said Daniel Alpert, managing partner at the investment bank Westwood Capital LLC.

A year ago, the report might have shaped the new financial rules now taking effect. Alternatively, if the commissioners had waited a few years, they might have been able to detect flaws in the new financial regulations and suggest improvements.

However, even if the panel had finished its work much earlier, the partisanship that divided the commissioners would have limited their ability to shape the regulatory overhaul. The Republican–appointed members didn’t even show up for the commission’s news conference presenting its final report.

 
Associated Press