Elizabeth Warren grills IN Treasurer Mourdock

I missed that there was actually a recording of the Congressional Oversight Panel’s hearings on the GM and Chrysler bankruptcies in Detroit.

As reported in the Detroit Free Press, the real fireworks came at the end of the show:

And so it went, for three hours, until Warren ended the ordeal by shredding Richard Mourdock, the hapless Indiana state treasurer.

Mourdock claimed his state’s retirees got cheated because their pension funds were granted only 29 cents on the dollar in Chrysler’s bankruptcy for their secured debt. But when Warren asked Mourdock how much Indiana paid for the debt, he conceded it was 43 cents on the dollar.

Mourdock soon sheepishly admitted the Chrysler debt was cheap to begin with because it was risky and everyone in the market knew that.

There’s a lot of high-minded talk about federal intervention, but up close it’s about scrapping for a few bucks amid the misfortune.

You can listen to this exchange on the COP’s blog. Mourdock’s testimony runs from about 168:00 to 173:57. Elizabeth Warren begins questioning Mourdock a bit later, starting at around 205:59 on the recording..