The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, a 10-member, bi-partisan, group of congressional appointees charged with determining the causes of last year's financial markets meltdown will begin its work today. The crisis resulted in a $700 billion appropriations bill and trillions of dollars in loan guarantees from the Fed, and now the FCIC will put the events that lead to the systemic breakdown under a microscope.

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The Nextgov blog Tech Insider is reporting that on the eve of All Hallows' Eve, the public will be treated with its first look at Recovery Act recipient report data. Recovery Board chief Earl Devaney has told Tech Insider that that the reports will become available after the 20-day correction and revision period allowed by the law to "mitigate[] the board's concern that large amounts of uncorrected data could actually harm transparency rather than enhance it."

Today, the Obama administration made an important advance in executive branch transparency by agreeing to publish the White House visitor logs.  Norm Eisen wrote on the White House blog that, “Each month, records of visitors from the previous 90-120 days will be made available online.”  The White House agreed to this measure as part of a settlement in a lawsuit brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).  As part of this settlement, the Obama administration will also turn over some visitor logs belonging to the Bush administration.

In a ploy to recapitalize Citigroup, Inc., the Department of Treasury converted last month a portion of its investment in the bank from preferred stock, which would have given Treasury an 8% return on its "investment" annually, to common stock (i.e. what is traded in the stock market), which guarantee nothing. So far, the gamble has paid off as Citi's shares have increased considerably in value since its purchase.