More hearings on Capitol Hill!

Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve for 18 1/2 years, was to be the star witness Thursday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

He faces questions about actions the government took or didn’t take that might have contributed to the boom in subprime mortgages and the subsequent housing market collapse that has led to the loss of billions of dollars in investments.

Meanwhile, Neel Kashkari, the interim head of the government’s $700 billion rescue effort, and other government officials were going before the Senate Banking Committee to lay out their plans for implementing the massive program.

Both hearings were expected to be contentious as lawmakers, already upset about having to vote for the biggest bailout in U.S. history, seek answers to what went wrong and try to determine why the government’s rescue effort, which just cleared Congress on Oct. 3, already has undergone a radical overhaul.

The Fed Chair Formerly Known As The Maestro will probably be called out for leaving interest rates at a near-negligible level and for not being a big fan of regulation. Still, one wonders if it will work out to be more like his FT editorial (which I covered in Chairin The Fed, Ur Doin It Rong) where basically he said if you think you’re ever going to be able to control speculation, mazel tov — speculative bubbles will find a way to build and collapse on their own no matter your fiscal and monetary policy.