Nominees Emerge for U.S. panel on Wall Street Meltdown

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A bipartisan panel armed with subpoena power to investigate causes of the Wall Street meltdown is on the brink of being launched, as Congress embarks on an ambitious effort to reform policing of the financial sector.

A short list of names has emerged for the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission that includes former Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson; former Democratic head of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission Brooksley Born; and Alex Pollock, a fellow at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Congress last month created the 10-member commission to study how fraud, regulatory lapses, monetary policy, accounting, lending practices and executive pay contributed to the worst U.S. financial crisis since the Great Depression.

U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said the panel is modeled after the Pecora Commission, a Depression-era U.S. Senate panel that investigated the causes of the 1929 Wall Street crash.

"I think the announcement should be coming in the near future," Pelosi spokesman Nadeam Elshami said about the naming of the appointees.