(FORTUNE Magazine) – Strenuously implying that this department should do something about it, a colleague sent along some oratory torn out of the Congressional Record, and several days later we had serendipitously learned what a hasty pudding is: a distinctively American cornmeal mush. Long before it gained renown via the Hasty Pudding Show at Harvard, it had been memorialized in a mock-heroic poem by Joel Barlow, published in 1796. Wait, don't leave. This is all relevant to banking and finance. The oratory in the House of Representatives was somewhat incredible. It was & delivered over the span of an hour or so by Henry B. Gonzalez, chairman of the House Banking Committee, to a mostly empty chamber at night. As is his wont, Henry had portentously titled his remarks ''My Advice to the Privileged Orders.'' It seems that over the past eight years, on around 110 different occasions, he has delivered extensive after-hours statements bearing that title and appropriately dirigiste sentiments, usually about finance. In the first rant in this series, served up on March 21, 1985, Gonzalez explained that he was borrowing the title from Barlow, who when not writing poetry about mush was a true revolutionary and friend of the people and never trusted the high and mighty. This exposition proved to be a transition into Henry's real subject of that evening: how flint-hearted bankers who failed to finance affordable housing were behind the homeless crisis. A Democrat from San Antonio who has served in the House since 1961 and chaired the Banking Committee since 1989, Gonzalez is clearly an original. We learn from some old Time research that he has gone months with only a couple of hours of sleep per night and is totally incorruptible. Also that he once slugged a fellow Congressman for calling him a communist. He has sponsored resolutions calling for the impeachments of Presidents Reagan (because of the Grenada invasion) and Bush (because of the attack on Iraq). Although not absolutely certain about Wright Patman (Banking Committee chairman from 1963 to 1975), the present scrivener believes Gonzalez is the first head of the committee who believes capital should be costless. Who not only favors mandated low interest rates -- he has recurrently introduced bills calling for federal credit controls -- but also evidently sees the whole idea of putting out money at interest as a gigantic swindle. Who recently said in the well of the House, and did not later edit it out of his remarks, that interest is ''something for nothing.'' And who further defined it as ''the mechanism in a society by virtue of which wealth is transferred from one sector to the other.'' For those not suspecting which sectors get to operate this machinery, the most recent Advice to the Privileged Orders (June 14) solemnly, or maybe the word is hysterically, concludes by averring that the whole game is run to benefit ''those who happen to lend and have the credit to lend at an unconscionable and, through the centuries, outlawed usurious rate.'' Take that, Privileged John Reed.

Like many other liberal Democrats, Gonzalez is fiercely opposed to the North American Free Trade Agreement. But as usual, he has his own angle on the subject. He claims that the real political pressure behind NAFTA comes from an effort by American banks to sink deep roots in Mexico, where they won't have to deal with big-league regulators and fearless Congressmen. The guy may need some sleep, at that.