The Japanese government has called a nuclear power emergency and evacuated nearly 200,000 people from the area surrounding two nuclear reactors as excessive radiation levels have been reported in the wake of a breakdown following Friday's earthquake. Japan has 55 reactors, which provide about one third of its total electricity, making it the world's third largest atomic energy user. This is the third time an earthquake has led to an accident at one of the country's nuclear plants in the past five years.

The world is witnessing first-hand the potential dangers of nuclear energy, as Japan faces the threat of a nuclear meltdown at several power plants, including the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, just 140 miles north of Tokyo. An explosion rocked the plant in the following Friday's earthquake. President Obama has been pushing nuclear energy as part of his new and clean energy policy, but the current events in Japan could be a setback. How will the disaster affect the industry?

A year ago this weekend, the U.S. financial system was teetering on the brink of collapse. As we approach the anniversary of Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy and Bank of America's acquisition of Merrill Lynch, we take a look back at the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008: the $700 billion federal effort to bail out the U.S. banking system. We speak with Elizabeth Warren, Harvard Law School professor and the chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel monitoring the bailout. (Read the full interview transcript, or check out all the stories in this series.)

All week we are reviewing the year that was — the year that marked the beginning of the financial meltdown and the recession that we continue to live through. Today we’re taking stock of how the nation’s banks are managing, one year after the government spent billions of taxpayers' dollars to bail them out. For a look at what regulations need to be in place to avoid future financial disasters, we talk with Eliot Spitzer. He was New York's attorney general before being elected governor; he first made a name for himself for keeping an eagle eye on the banking industry. We are also joined by Tyler Cowen, professor of economics at George Mason University and author of the new book, Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World. (click through for the interview transcript.)

All week long we are reviewing the year that was: the year that marked the beginning of the financial meltdown and the recession that we continue to live through. Today we are focusing on the $600 billion collapse of Lehman Brothers — the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history. It’s a moment that many believe sent the global economy into crisis. To get a sense of the forces leading up to that day we speak with a Lehman Brothers’ insider, former vice president of distressed debt and convertible securities at Lehman Brothers, Lawrence McDonald. He's the author of the new book, A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers.

We also talk to our contributor Louise Story, finance reporter for the New York Times, about the collapse of Lehmann and the ensuing global financial crisis. Louise also tells us about the new spate of corporate mergers that could indicate the nation's economy is making the slow turn towards recovery.

All this week, we are looking back at the events that triggered the financial meltdown, one year ago. Today, we focus on the  housing market, then and now. We talk to economist Robert Shiller, of the Case-Shiller home-price index, who was among the few experts to warn of the coming housing crisis. We also speak to New York State Supreme Court Judge Arthur Schack, who has a penchant for halting the bank foreclosures that come before his bench. (Read his profile in the New York Times, "A ‘Little Judge’ Who Rejects Foreclosures, Brooklyn Style") And we also talk to Pamela Zombeck, who is struggling to hold on to her home in Salem, Massachusetts.

Listen to more housing stories in this series.

A year ago today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury bailed out mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. By the end of the week, financial behemoth Lehman Brothers had filed for bankruptcy and a global economic crisis had taken hold. We start a week of coverage that looks at the repercussions of the financial meltdown and where we're at, a year after it began.

We are joined by a roundtable of leading business journalists including Gillian Tett, capital markets editor for The Financial Times and author of “Fools Gold: How the Bold Dream of a Small Tribe at J.P. Morgan Was Corrupted by Wall Street Greed and Unleashed a Catastrophe;” Jon Hilsenrath, chief economics correspondent for The Wall Street journal; and New York Times business columnist Joe Nocera.

Listen to all the segments in this series.