What caused the financial crisis? And why were regulators so unprepared for it?

Simple questions. Yet, almost four years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, answers are still hotly debated.

In Money, Power and Wall Street, veteran FRONTLINE producers Martin Smith and Marcela Gaviria document the origins of the crisis — not in a Wall Street boardroom, but a luxury hotel in Boca Raton, Fla., where, in the summer of 1994, a team of 20-something bankers pioneered an insurance product called a credit default swap.

Smith and Gaviria show how this innovative financial product — designed to reduce risk — planted the seeds of financial destruction.

Did public officials understand the risks posed by credit default swaps? Could government intervention have prevented the meltdown? And what, if anything, have the banks and the regulators learned from the past four years?

We’ve asked Martin and Marcela to join us for a live chat to discuss these questions, and take yours.

They’ll be joined by guest questioner/resident expert Gillian Tett, U.S. managing editor of the Financial Times, who was the first journalist to tell the full story of the Boca Raton meetings in her book Fool’s Gold: How Unrestrained Greed Corrupted a Dream, Shattered Global Markets.

You can leave a question in the chat window below, and come by at 1 p.m. ET on Wednesday, April 25th to join the live discussion.

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