Next up for the financial-meltdown panel: Face time with Greenspan, Prince, Rubin and Mudd

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In the search for who to blame for the financial-system meltdown, some names show up on any short list more often than others.

Some of those individuals will be testifying in Washington over the next three days at hearings called by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, the federal panel named to investigate the meltdown.

First up on Wednesday: Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, the ‘maestro’ who kept short-term interest rates near rock-bottom for much of 2003 and 2004, helping to inflate what would become a massive U.S. credit bubble.

Greenspan also famously saw no need to regulate subprime mortgage lending.
He’ll testify beginning at 6 a.m. PDT on Wednesday.

Appropriately enough, Greenspan will be followed by a panel on subprime mortgage origination and securitization. That panel will include testimony from Patricia Lindsay, former vice president for corporate risk at New Century Financial, the notorious Irvine-based subprime lender that went bust in 2007.

On Thursday the commission will start the day with testimony from Chuck Prince, the former Citigroup Inc. chief executive who was ousted in November 2007 as the loss-ridden bank began its long decline to near-collapse -- saved, ultimately, by U.S. taxpayers.

Prince will be on a panel with Robert Rubin, who served on Citi’s board and who, as the Clinton administration’s Treasury Secretary from 1995 to 1999, refused to support significant regulation of derivative securities.

Friday will be Fannie Mae Day: The commission will question Daniel Mudd, who was the mortgage-finance giant’s CEO from 2005 through 2008, as well as from Fannie’s former regulators at the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight.

The commission’s full list of witnesses is here.

-- Tom Petruno