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.

Dredging through all that [the causes of the crisis] again will only be a waste of time and a distraction from more urgent tasks, critics say.

But it's also true that the crisis has not yet been examined from top to bottom in a public forum by a single panel armed with the power to subpoena witnesses and documents.

Key Senate and House of Representatives committees, often overwhelmed by political point-scoring and rigid ideological rhetoric, have not comprehensively tackled the task, despite the insistence of some lawmakers that it needs to be done.

The bipartisan commission, say its proponents, at least has the potential to profoundly influence policy. Just look, they say, at the impact in the 1930s of the so-called Pecora Commission, on which today's panel was loosely modeled.

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