After a Two Week Absence, Imus Welcomes Wallace Back with Open Arms. Sort Of.

Imus began today’s chat with Chris Wallace by asking a longwinded, high-minded question about derivative regulation, an indication that this would not be a good morning for the host of Fox News Sunday.

But Wallace fielded the question—what are some of the loopholes in the measure passed yesterday by the Senate Agriculture Committee—the best he could.

“I vaguely know what derivatives are, but I don’t know I could explain the details,” he admitted. In fact, his son Peter works for the Wall Street firm Blackstone (“He’s going to probably end up in jail in about six years,” Wallace joked), and frequently teases his father for not knowing the difference between a CDS and a CDO.

Imus confessed trying to make his guest look like a moron. “I said to Charles just before you appeared, ‘Watch what I’m going to do to Wallace,’” he said.

Wallace did know why the Agriculture Committee, of all entities, was charged with overseeing derivatives. “A lot of the derivatives people bet on have to do with the price of food commodities or livestock commodities, because people want a certainty in the price they’re going to get,” he explained. “They will sell futures on their corn or their pork bellies at a certain price.”

Should that price fall, the seller is assured the minimum; if it rises, they don’t get all the profits, but they know at what price they can sell their goods. “Are you a little impressed that I knew the answer to that?” Wallace said proudly. No, not really.

Moving on, Imus wondered why Obama declared there had been no collusion between the SEC and Democrats in going after Goldman Sachs right before the Senate vote on financial regulatory reform.

“Obviously a lot of people were saying, gee, it’s interesting, we’re having all this push for financial regulation, and the SEC goes after the biggest, if not the most prominent, investment bank out there,” said Wallace, who suspects the SEC was actually trying to bury a report showing they had failed for ten years to catch Ponzi schemer Allen Stanford.

Then Imus asked if Obama would be speaking to Wall Street today, which Wallace ridiculed by saying, “You’re in New York—I would think you would know.”

Imus, who was merely trying to impart information to the audience, had no patience for Wallace’s snarkiness, and suggested he focus on answering the questions and taking off a few pounds “so we don’t have to look at three chins every Sunday morning.”

Things got even uglier when Wallace, who boasted he lost six-and-a-half pounds this year, was told by Imus to “drop 60 more.”

While Wallace focuses on trimming his waistline, he’ll speak this Sunday with two men charged with trimming the national deficit, Debt Commission co-Chairs Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson. 

“We’ll be watching,” said Imus, a loyal viewer. “Either that, or SportsCenter.”

-Julie Kanfer