Obama panel to spread the blame for 2008 financial crisis

Jan 26, 2011, 18:49 GMT

Washington - A US inquiry into the 2008 financial crisis will release its final report on Thursday and is likely to spread the blame across banks and government regulators for failing to heed the many warning signs ahead of Wall Street's near collapse.

President Barack Obama's Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission will document what amounts to incompetence and greed in many of the country's top financial institutions, and a failure of regulators across the Bill Clinton and George W Bush administrations to keep them in check, according to a copy of the report seen by The New York Times.

'The greatest tragedy would be to accept the refrain that no one could have seen this coming and thus nothing could have been done,' the panel writes, according to the Times. 'If we accept this notion, it will happen again.'

The much-anticipated report, totalling 576 pages, is meant to be the final word on what caused a financial collapse that reached its height with Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy in September 2008 and soon tipped the entire world into recession.

Its findings are the result of more than 700 interviews, 19 days of public hearings and the perusal of millions of pages of documents since the bipartisan comission was created by Obama in May 2009.

But the 10-member panel was sowed with divisions among its members that could well reduce its authority in the US' ongoing debate over how to avert the next crisis.

The commission's findings will be backed by its six Democrats but opposed by its four Republicans, The New York Times reported. Those against will issue separate reports outlining their reasons.

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