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| Friday, October 23, 2009 |
| Frontline focusing on the economy |
Last night I watched the Frontline story: The Warning about regulator Brooksley Born's attempt to curb the derivative's market in the 1990's. It was this unchecked market that has been largely responsible for the current economic crisis. Very interesting piece and you can watch the show online.
But it is next week's show that I am now looking forward to. While I try to pay attention and learn the larger economic lessons - it is always the personal day-to-day money struggles and successes of individuals that I find most fascinating. So I was very excited to see that Frontline is doing an entire episode on the personal money stories found at a New York City hair salon.
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| posted by Boston Gal @ 12:01 PM *
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| 5 Comments: |
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I saw this too!! What an eye opener. I had no idea that Greenspan, Rubin and Summers literally conspired against Brooksley in an effort to shut her down. She saw the problem looming on the horizon with plenty of time to put regulations into place to curb the nebulous derivatives market and they prevented her from doing it. Being vindicated after the fact has little consolation. Of greater concern is the fact that Obama now has Summers as a key economic advisor. Yikes!!!
Frontline Rocks!!
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thanks for the link! Impressed PBS is putting whole eppy online. Didn't know they did that.
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Different take on Brooksley ... would any of her regulatory changes made any difference in the housing crisis? If so what/why?
I don't see derivatives playing a role in people getting 105% LTV mortgages in California or spending +50% of their income on mortgages they can't afford.
Not that she doesn't come across well in the show, but I think too much of the media looks for easy sound bite (and she has a great name for it BTW).
The more more nuanced, "banks gave too much mortgage money to too many irresponsible people in california, where the law allows them to walk away from their mortgages without consequence". As a result, house price decline causes millions to send back the keys, and mortgages that regulators and rating agencies said were AAA are really only worth 30 cents on the dollar" ... just doesn't fit into frontline's format
I'll hold aside whether frontline has ever done a program that shows the failure of regulation or government where the markte can do better.
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Good thing this is on PBS. what would people do if they thought the crisis wasn't Bush's fault?
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You can go back even further and find warnings. Fortune magazine did a big article on derivatives back in the early to mid-90's on the entire derivative scam and what would happen if it blew up.
I would mention it to people and they'd look at you strange, now they don't!
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I saw this too!! What an eye opener. I had no idea that Greenspan, Rubin and Summers literally conspired against Brooksley in an effort to shut her down. She saw the problem looming on the horizon with plenty of time to put regulations into place to curb the nebulous derivatives market and they prevented her from doing it. Being vindicated after the fact has little consolation. Of greater concern is the fact that Obama now has Summers as a key economic advisor. Yikes!!!
Frontline Rocks!!