No Accounting for Wrath of Geithner at AIG Trial: Opening Line

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For a very brief moment, around the age of 17, we had thoughts of joining the volunteer fire company a block away. One night, we tagged along to watch the guys at work. It was a little house plopped down in a row of other little houses on a crowded street, with maybe 15 feet between each.

You could see smoke and some flames, but it didn’t look like a conflagration. Yet the guys were just destroying the house -- breaking windows, punching holes in the roof, etc. The homeowner winced with each blow, and so did we, and we asked one of the firemen later, was all that really necessary? And the guy said, you have no idea how on fire that house was inside. You couldn’t see it from out there.