Bundles of security swaps were rated Triple A and the people on Wall Street sold them to the world, knowing they were not Triple A. It was a crime. If the local gas station sold something they described as premium gas that turned out to be snake oil, the operators would be charged and go to prison. That is what happened here, except that the operators were not prosecuted. They were rewarded.

Once I had asked him about the economic meltdown and heard his rambling explanation, I realized he was like the bimbos (male and female) on Fox Business News who still don’t really know – or are reluctant to say - what happened. The idea of someone with this kind of brainpower being too lazy to learn the basics of the biggest economic scandal in American History, filled me with dismay, but it didn’t surprise me.

To see him milk the situation and jump on the "Let’s punish the banks" bandwagon, is why I hate politics. People like this who are merely reinforcing the convenient spin of the 1% – and letting the truth slip away – should get out of the game. They are not helping. The clearest case of pandering is when he says that part of the problem was banks acting in their own self-interest. What are they supposed to do?

No, the real problem was that a crime had occurred. The easy way out is to pretend that banks in general are the enemy, while the thieves run free. That was a disappointing explanation for me, but it didn’t change my mood. That would come later.

In fact, if you hear my tone during this, I sound respectful and even deferential. Oh, and by the way, I ask what I consider to be the best question in any interview in America this year. Better than anything from the White House press corps. Better than anything on the debates. It went like this:

"The longer these Occupy camps go on, the more we hear people criticize the lawlessness aspect. But how do you expect young people to respect the law, when we, as a society, just witnessed Wall Street commit the biggest rip-off in the history of the world, and not only were they not punished – they were rewarded?"

His answer was: "There’s a major problem with white-collar financial crimes being lawyered away by the highest paid lawyers in the world. We have a national problem with banking regulations not keeping up with realities of the financial markets. We have people either without the tools or without the courage to hold those with a smoking financial gun accountable for a global financial crisis that hopefully will not become a global double-dip financial holocaust. There’s no question about that."

Incidentally, any time someone throws in the "holocaust" word, you can be pretty sure he’s a Newt Gingrich-style, smart-sounding fool, but the answer came out with flair and I complimented him on it. However, it was more of the same spin. The problem was not that banking regulations hadn't kept up. They were deliberately changed. They were rolled back. The rules in the 1990s were altered at the urging of people like Henry Paulson. If anything, Jefferson Smith hadn't kept up. Then I asked:

"As we know from 'It’s a Wonderful Life,' another Jimmy Stewart film, we actually need banks, so why aren’t you stressing banking reform and prosecution of the people who did this, rather than trashing the idea of banking? Aren’t you just playing to the crowd?"

The substance of the question is right on, although I did ask it in a somewhat whimsical way, to reflect the fact that his consulting firm is named after a Jimmy Stewart movie.

It is his answer that turned this interview contentious, and I’m still fuming about him calling this question "crap" even now. I could have sat there and listened to this guy pontificate – or to use the word he used in the last tape, "preach" – but something about hearing him display a disgraceful lack of knowledge about the economic meltdown, even as he lectured America about punishing banks on the Huffington Post, primed me to be upset at his remark calling my question "crap" – especially as it followed so soon after what I maintain is the best interview question asked in America this year.

At this point, I did get "cantankerous." to use a word in the comments, and remain so about Mr. Smith to this day. I apologize for that, but this lazy, babbling buffoon set me off. Nothing about bank reform and prosecuting the people who caused our economic world to collapse is crap. It is at the heart of what we should be doing. Frankly (to use Newt Gingrich’s favorite word), I thought the candidate was being a jerk, and it colored the rest of the interview.

Several times after this in the interview, Jefferson Smith would go on at length about my preconceived notion of who he was, but I think he came in there with a preconceived notion of his own. I think he assumed that he was going to get another fawning Portland interview like the ones I had watched on YouTube. I don’t play that. Just because he founded the Bus Project doesn’t mean he gets an all-day pass.