As part of an earlier bill, Congress initiated the modern-day analogue to the Pecora Commission of the 1930s, named after its chief counsel Ferdinand Pecora.  That commission detailed the origins of the financial crisis that caused the Great Depression, and led to the passage of several banking reforms, including the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated investment banks and commercial banks.  The Pecora Commission was credited for the reforms that stabilized the financial system after a 19th century full of depressions.  After decades of neglect and deregulation, we needed a new Pecora Commission to examine the breakdowns in the financial system and recommend best practices to ensure it never happens again.  And the man who will head this commission is Phil Angelides.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid today announced six appointments to the 10-member Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, established by Congress to examine the domestic and global causes of the financial crisis.

Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid appointed Phil Angelides as chairman of the Commission. The statute requires the House Speaker and the Senate Majority Leader to jointly appoint a commission chair. Mr. Angelides, one of Speaker Pelosi’s three appointments to the commission, served with distinction as the elected California State Treasurer from 1999 to 2007. He has earned national recognition as an effective public and private sector leader with broad expertise and accomplishments in the fields of investor protection, housing, finance, and corporate and financial market reform.

The 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 had they not received exceptional government assistance. The Commission will provide its findings and conclusions in a final report due to Congress on December 15, 2010.

Obviously this takes Angelides out of the running for any political races in the 2010 cycle.  But he’ll actually have a far more influential position – determining the causes of the financial crisis and how to fully reform the system.  I’m pleased that Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid went outside of Washington for this task, not to any of the typical high priests of bipartisanship.  I hope Angelides can get this job done, and it seems to fit with his skills.

The rest of the Democrats on the commission, including Clinton-era official Brooksley Born (who wanted to regulate derivates in the late 1990s) and former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, can be found at the release.

…The Republicans added a vice-chairman with a California connection: former House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas.