Live Chat 2:30 p.m. ET: How Do You Stop A Financial Meltdown? (Hour 2)

This is the second of four chats we’ll be hosting as part of our Money, Power and Wall Street series. On Wednesday, 5/2, Ryan Lizza, The New Yorker’s Washington correspondent, will be joining producers Michael Kirk and Mike Wiser at 1:00 p.m. ET for a live chat about hour 3.

On Thursday, Sept. 18, 2008, the astonished leadership of the U.S. Congress was told by the chairman of the Federal Reserve that the American economy was on the brink of a complete meltdown within a matter of days.

How did it all go so bad so quickly? Who was responsible? How effective was the response from Washington and Wall Street? And why were the officials tasked with preventing a crisis like this so unprepared for it?

FRONTLINE producers Michael Kirk and Mike Wiser investigate these questions in the second hour of Money, Power and Wall Street. They go behind closed doors in Washington and Wall Street to trace the largest government bailout in U.S. history, a series of decisions that rewrote the rules of government and fueled a debate that would alter the country’s political landscape.

They began reporting on the financial crisis nearly four years ago, and they’ve interviewed hundreds of people along the way. Now it’s your turn — what are your questions for Michael Kirk and Mike Wiser?

We’ll be joined by guest questioner/resident expert Andrew Ross Sorkin, editor of The New York Times‘ DealBook, who wrote a definitive account of the response to the crisis in Too Big To Fail. You can leave a question in the chat window below, and come by at 2:30 p.m. ET on Thursday, April 26 to join the live discussion.