ROBERT RUBIN: Don’t blame deregulation for the financial meltdown. Congress, on the other hand . . . .

Meanwhile, reader Stan Brown emails: “I’m watching the Senate hearing and listening to the senators question Paulson, Cox and Bernanke. The markets continue to fall as investors also listen. Clearly, if experience in the Senate leads to the performance we are watching today, experience is seriously overrated. These senators are frightening.” I feel that way every time I watch a Senate hearing. Where do we get these people?

UPDATE: It’s Jennifer Rubin quoting Robert Rubin. Scroll down. Ed Cone says that Robert Rubin is engaged in “legacy maintenance.” But if so, that still undermines the “It was Bush deregulation” talking point, doesn’t it?

And on the Senate hearings, a hedge-fund reader emails:

I’ve been watching these kinds of hearings for far longer than I care to say, and to be honest, this is the best effort I’ve ever seen by the senators.

I’ve seen cringe-inducing tirades, outright lies, and pie-in-the-sky fantasies from that panel in the past. Today, they were sober and honest, with a minimum of grandstanding.

It’s a measure of how seriously they view their own positions, and the gravity of what they’re being asked to do.

Stocks fell because the markets now must discount their doing the right thing and NOT socializing the losses.

Hmm.