Tonight on PBS' FRONTLINE: The Warnings

Tonight on PBS Frontline is investigates the causes of the financial crisis. Check your local listings for times. And for a sneak peak here is the link to Frontline website.

From the press release:

"We didn't truly know the dangers of the market, because it was a dark market," says Brooksley Born, the head of an obscure federal regulatory agency -- the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) -- who not only warned of the potential for economic meltdown in the late 1990s, but also tried to convince the country's key economic powerbrokers to take actions that could have helped avert the crisis. "They were totally opposed to it," Born says. "That puzzled me. What was it that was in this market that had to be hidden?"

......

"I didn't know Brooksley Born," says former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt, a member of President Clinton's powerful Working Group on Financial Markets. "I was told that she was irascible, difficult, stubborn, unreasonable." Levitt explains how the other principals of the Working Group -- former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin -- convinced him that Born's attempt to regulate the risky derivatives market could lead to financial turmoil, a conclusion he now believes was "clearly a mistake."

This may be good.

Subject Meta: 

Forum Categories: 

Just watched it.

As a matter of accountability - Larry Summers and Tim Geithner either should resign or be fired.

Are we the only country in the world where you have a direct role in a major crisis but are rewarded with a new and even more influential job?

RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.

Corruption

That was my reaction to the episode. The Chairwoman of CFTC finds fraud in the system, tries to bring it under control by rule making, and you have three very senior officials actively engaged in obstruction. If an allegedly independent regulator (Greenspan) colludes with White House and Treasury in trying to silence another regulator, what are we to make of it? Rubin has "13 bankers" in his office and he is doing their bidding by intimidating a public official over the phone?
And Phil Gramm? Frontline should do a sequel and look at the role of Gramm in this revolving door sleaze.
Willie Sutton had it right. He was just on the wrong side of the counter.
Frank T.

Frank T.

No one has been held accountable for this crisis.

NO ONE. Moody's should be brought up on RICO charges. Geithner and Summers shouldn't have jobs right now. Greenspan goes on the lecture circuit and still gets millions. Too big to fail gets even bigger.

Where the f*ck is the accountability?

RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.