Congressional leaders have tapped former California State Treasurer Phil Angelides as chairman of the 10-member Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission tasked with examining the domestic and global causes of the financial crisis.

Angelides served as California State Treasurer from 1999 to 2007. As required under the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act, the statute that created it, he was jointly appointed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Pelosi also appointed former Commodities Futures Trading Commission chair Brooksley Born; John W. Thompson, Chairman of the Board of Directors of security software maker Symantec Corp.

Reid also appointed former U.S. Senator and Florida Governor Bob Graham; Heather Murren, a retired managing director for Global Securities Research and Economics at Merrill Lynch and Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board for Nevada Cancer Institute, and Georgiou Enterprises president Byron Georgiou, a Las Vegas-based businessman and attorney who also serves on the advisory board of the Harvard Law School Program on Corporate Governance.

The commission will also include four additional members, two appointed by the House Minority Leader and two appointed by the Senate Minority Leader. The Vice-Chair is selected jointly by the House Minority Leader and the Senate Minority Leader.

As previously reported, the 10-member Commission will conduct a comprehensive examination of, and hold hearings on, more than 20 specific areas of inquiry related to the financial crisis, including the role of fraud and abuse in the financial sector; state and federal regulatory enforcement; tax treatment of financial products; credit rating agencies; lending practices and securitization; unregulated financial products and practices; and corporate governance and executive compensation. The Commission will also examine the causes of major financial institutions that failed or were likely to fail if they hadn't received exceptional government assistance. Its findings and conclusions are due in a final report due to Congress on Dec. 15, 2010.

The Commission is empowered to hold hearings and to issue subpoenas either for witness testimony or documents. At the chair's discretion, the commission's report may include specific findings on any financial institution examined by the commission.

Topics