Much like the 9/11 commission hearings held after the 2001 terrorist attacks, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission will begin holding public hearings this week in Washington, D.C., to determine the forces that led to the financial crisis of 2008. New York Times columnist Frank Rich describes the causes of the crisis — including greedy Wall Street investment bankers, lax mortgage lending and the sale of complex and unregulated financial instruments — as "the other plot to wreck America."

Rich points out that most Americans know about al-Qaida, terrorism cells, and the plot involving hijacked airliners, while they know little about the collateral debt obligations and credit default swaps that, while not killing anyone, arguably caused more damage to more Americans than the 9/11 attacks.

Writing about the financial crisis inquiry, Rich says that "Americans must be told the full story of how Wall Street gamed and inflated the housing bubble, made out like bandits, and then left millions of households in ruin."

At a time when Congress is considering new financial reforms and increasing regulation of the financial sector, it is critical that Americans understand how the crisis happened — who caused it, who was enriched by it — and the best ways to avoid a recurrence. Americans also should understand that the giant banks that were bailed out with taxpayer billions because they were deemed too big to fail are now even bigger.

Americans also should understand how these giant financial firms are able to operate as not only commercial banks, which take deposits and make loans, but also as investment banks, which sell securities and make sometimes-risky financial bets.

Until 1999, the Depresion-era Glass-Steagall Act prevented this dual function, keeping commercial banks and riskier investment banks separate. But aggressive lobbying and campaign contributions from investment banks resulted in the law being repealed by Congress about 10 years ago.

And Wall Street's power and influence that led to the repeal of Glass-Steagall, based on hundreds of millions of dollars of lobbying and campaign contributions to key members of Congress, remains today and is pressing to water down financial reform measures designed to prevent a repeat of the crisis of 2008-09.

The financial lobby is so powerful that Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said last year that even after the financial crisis "they are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And frankly, they own the place."

The financial inquiry hearings offer a chance for Americans to learn more about how the crisis happened. The hearings should examine the low-interest-rate environment created by the Federal Reserve that encouraged massive borrowing as well as the role of the Federal National Mortgage Association, known as Fannie Mae, (and the members of Congress on its board) in easing mortage lending standards to increase home ownership while increasing risk. The commission should examine the extreme leverage used by investment banks to make trillions of dollars of risky bets, with little money held in reserve in case the bets turned sour.

There also are increasing concerns that in addition to lobbying and campaign contributions to Congress, Wall Street has infiltrated Washington, D.C., and the White House to the extent that a bias favoring investment bankers is now entrenched. It's worth noting that dozens of key people, in addition to former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, now working in the Treasury Department are former investment bankers, hedge fund managers or bank lobbyists.

Some observers believe that this pro-banker culture in Washington explains why the Wall Street bailouts came with few strings and nothing like the CEO-firing and board-of- directors-purgings that Washington imposed on General Motors and Chrysler when it kept those firms afloat with taxpayer bailout money.

The cultural bias toward Wall Street also could explain why investment bank Goldman Sachs got 100 cents on the dollar for the risky bets it made that were tied to A.I.G. when A.I.G. received its bailout. Why did the Treasury reduce taxpayers' costs by letting A.I.G. trading partners, like Goldman Sachs, take what is called a haircut, or partial loss?

Rich asks, "Why was our money used to make these high-flying gamblers whole while ordinary Americans received no such beneficence?"

The billions of dollars of bonuses soon to be paid on Wall Street, while most people living closer to Main Street still struggle, will surely fuel widespread anger at the financial industry. And that anger can help drive reform.

If the financial inquiry commission does its job, Americans will better understand what led to the financial crisis. And when they understand the unethical and risky activity conducted by the so-called "masters of the universe" on Wall Street, then public pressure will mount for Congress to impose tough reforms, rather than buckle to Wall Street pressure to weaken reform proposals.

If tough reforms do not follow, including possibly breaking up too-big-to-fail banks and updating a new Glass-Steagall Act, Rich warns that Wall Street will return to business as usual — and that, Rich says, is a ticking bomb that threatens America.