The Coming Foreclosure Tsunami

Unlike most hearings on the Hill, last week's meeting of the Joint Economic Committee actually got more interesting the longer it went on. While the first half-hour featured Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke offering his modest, softly downbeat but not panicked predictions about how the unfolding subprime mess would affect the broader economy, the last hour provided an opportunity to hear committee members give their own often eccentric diagnoses and predictions.