So far this year, Phil Angelides has made Alan Greenspan squirm. He's rattled the head of Goldman Sachs and put the nation's chief money men, Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner, on the spot about the stock market crash.

Now Angelides, the former Democratic state treasurer deputized by Congress to investigate the market collapse, is bringing his roadshow to his hometown. As chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, he will preside over a hearing in Sacramento on Thursday to delve into the details of the housing bubble.

Sacramento is the last stop on a tour that has taken Angelides' commission to other troubled communities – Bakersfield, Las Vegas and Miami. It's also the last day of public testimony before the commission delivers its report to Congress in mid-December.

Angelides said "field hearings" in places like Sacramento aren't window dressing; they're essential to understanding how the mortgage industry went haywire.

"This isn't something that just happened in the suites of Wall Street," he said.

It's no accident that the field hearings – which are open to the public – are being held in cities such as Sacramento and Miami; they're among the epicenters of the meltdown and the hometowns of key members of the commission. If mortgage securities traders and others on Wall Street had come to places like Sacramento during the housing boom, "they would have had a much better sense of how badly skewed things had become," Angelides said.

Interviewed at his office in east Sacramento, the 57-year-old Angelides said the commission's investigation has been "both fascinating and disturbing." Although Congress passed sweeping financial-market reform legislation in July, he warns that another implosion could take place.

"The captains of industry are largely untouched. Many of the policymakers who were there in Washington before, are still there," he said. "If we don't learn the lessons of history, we are doomed to bail it out again."

Angelides has had to endure accusations from some conservatives that he's running a Democratic witch hunt. One of his biggest critics: Rep. Darrell Issa of Vista in Southern California, the top Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

In late July, Issa sent Angelides a letter saying the commission reeks of "partisan Democratic politics" and is beset with potential conflicts of interest. He noted that one of its commissioners, and a key staffer, work for a San Diego law firm that specializes in filing securities-fraud lawsuits for shareholders.

Angelides said the complaints were "bogus." The commission has strict ethical guidelines and has steered a bipartisan course, he said. Its vice chairman is a Republican, former Rep. Bill Thomas of Bakersfield.

What's more, Angelides contends, Issa's complaint is part of a larger effort by financial interests to keep the commission from investigating Wall Street. "I will tell you we have very powerful forces arrayed against us … who want to knock us off our feet," he said.

An Issa spokesman, Frederick Hill, said the congressman's "concerns have still not been addressed."

Angelides was similarly dismissive of a recent New York Times story saying the commission "has been hampered by an exodus of senior employees and by internal disagreements."

Angelides called the story "silly Washington gossip" – but in the same breath said it likely was fed by the groups behind Issa's complaints. He said staff turnover has been minimal and the commission has operated in harmony.

After losing the governor's race in 2006 to Arnold Schwarzenegger, Angelides has turned to investing in green industries and urban development, two sectors he championed while state treasurer. He said he put his investment work largely on the shelf when Congress handed him an $8 million budget (since expanded to $9.8 million) to run the investigation into the market crash.

The commission kicked off its public work with hearings in January, extracting testimony from the likes of Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. When Blankfein called the meltdown unavoidable, comparing it to a hurricane or other acts of God, Angelides cut in.

"Acts of God, we'll exempt. These were acts of men and women," he said.

Angelides had similar moments with Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, asking why he didn't rein in subprime loans. Greenspan said policing loans wasn't really the Fed's job.

Earlier this month, Angelides grilled Bernanke, the current Fed chairman, and Geithner, now the Treasury secretary, about the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 – the event that caused the stock market to crash.

Bernanke and Geithner, who at the time was a key official with the Fed, said they were powerless to save Lehman. Angelides' commission, though, released e-mails and other documents suggesting officials could have rescued the investment bank. At the hearing, Angelides said government officials made a "conscious policy decision" to let Lehman go under.

In the interview, Angelides said the commission's report will prove important even though Congress already has acted on market reform.

The legislation is a broad brush, he said; the details still have to be filled in by regulators at various agencies. The ultimate success or failure of the new law will depend on how those details are hammered out.

Now that the law has passed, "the 3,000 lobbyists who represent the financial industry have left Capitol Hill and they're now at the doors of every regulatory agency," Angelides said. "The reform debate is just beginning."

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