If you could go back and tell yourself to not do one thing during the financial crisis, what would that be, and why? -- Kathy Ackerman, Minneapolis
I've obviously thought about this a lot, and I believe that the major decisions we made were the right ones. But I've got a list of things that I would like to have done better. For instance, when we sent the Troubled Asset Relief Program [TARP] proposal to Congress, it was a three-page outline. It was not intended to be a complete request. It was intended to be a starting point for negotiation. I wish now we had said that.

As Treasury Secretary, what was your greatest strength and your greatest weakness? -- Debra Turner, New York City
I would think my greatest strength was decisiveness. My biggest weakness was public speaking. I never was able to let the American people know that the bailout was not about the banks but about Main Street and how a collapse of the financial system would be devastating.

More than a year after TARP launched, do you think it's working? -- Matthew Thacker, Bowling Green, Ohio
I believe it is working very well. Remember, the purpose was to stabilize the financial system. If the system had collapsed, we would have had economic Armageddon.

What day or moment during the financial crisis do you remember most? -- Carlos Lopez, Tulsa, Okla.
I remember Sunday, the 14th of September, 2008, when we realized that despite everything we tried, we didn't have the authority to prevent the failure of Lehman Brothers. It was going to be ... Catastrophic is too strong a word, but it was going to be a big problem.