Anyone watch Frontline last night? "The Warning" Brooksley Born, etc.

[groovedaddy]

It's a great program the pretty well lays it out there - what a bunch of lying, coniving, greedy bastards these people really are!

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/?utm_campaign=homepage&utm_medium=bigimage&utm_source=bigimage

[rurallib]

1. Wanted to but had a meeting - is it online anywhere?

Jeesch - why don't I look at the link? forgive me.

[jtrockville]

2. Follow the link in the OP and click on "Watch the Full Program"

[asdjrocky]

3. Sure did.

Very disturbing to see all this again. I remember those hearings on Cspan.

Everyone that helped to walk us right into the place we are now attacked Brooksley Born, and guess what? The lady was right all along.

Thank you Mr Greenspan.

[zipplewrath]

4. And they're all still there

And there in the pictures with Rubin, are the current democratic leadership. Summers, Geithner, et. al.

It really left me hopeless.

[permabear]

6. Obama goofed

Summers and Geithner were key players during the later Clinton years. And as the Frontline episode showed, they were strong advocates of overturning Glass Steagall and in failing to regulate the derivatives market. Time has shown how wrong these guys economic advice was. Obama made a huge mistake when he brought these guys back as the heart of his economic team. They have always had a bias towards Wall Street over main street. They have deregulation in their economic core. They were the wrong choices at the wrong time. Obama needs to listen to folks like Paul Volcker more. Obama also needs to emphasize deficit reduction over stimulus before it's too late for the United States.

[OllieLotte]

15. Agreed. Volcker is the person everyone should be

listening to.

[upi402]

19. Obamas cabinet picks destroyed all my hope

I new he was a corporatist, but held out hope that once he won...

The Volker proposal seems to be team Obama looking at huge Republican wins coming up. It's a facade. It will be watered down IF it is ever enacted. Then not enforced. But "Democrats" will face opponents with unlimited corporate dollars. And the "Democrats have lost their activist base.

[progressoid]

7. Hopeless

That's why I didn't watch it. I'm tired of that feeling.

[blueworld]

5. I've seen it before & agree it's excellent. n/t

[xchrom]

8. And they're back.

Obama essentially agrees with the Greenspan
market/economy view.

[jrrjr]

9. Brooksley Born

I would like to know where Brooksley Born is now. We need people like her desperately. Does anyone know how to contact her?

[upi402]

11. I wish I could thank her, but no.

:patriot:
Hearing Alan Greenspan's testimony stating he was wrong about the free market was rich. If it was a sincere mia culpa. Hell, even I knew it was fail if unchecked 3 decades ago.

[jtuck004]

12. She's retired from Arnold & Porter but

You could try email to the below address, or see if they would forward a message.

Brooksley E. Born
Retired Partner Washington, DC
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]

Brooksley.Born@ aporter.com

Tell her your are not the only one that appreciates her service

[upi402]

10. Yes, a must see

Reminded me of great old PBS investigative journalism.

I never watch much since they did a doc about the JFK assassination. They showed how a shot from up and behind creates an entrance wound in front and exit wound behind. And how his scalp blew back wards and head lurched backward too... toward the shooter.

then PBS refuse to air 'The Panama Deception' claiming it was unbalanced. Hell, if it was on broadcast TV it would've been THE balance.

[jtuck004]

13. Huh. So the markets can take care of themself.

No rules for fraud.

Let's get rid of the statutes against armed robbery as well. Folks at the Piggly Wiggly can just carry shotguns, take care of it themselves. Yes, a few innocent bystanders might get hurt or killed, but why have all that regulation stuff in the way?

Oh, yeah, that's what happened in the stock market as well.

Thanks for posting this.

[JohnWxy]

14. Interesting, but they left out a major part of the story: the Commodities Futures Modernization Act

THis was slipped in as a rider to an 11,000 page funding bill. It legalized trading in Credit Default Swaps and made them unegulated and unmonitored by the Government. This is what caused the sub-Prime loan market to explode because CDSs supposedly protected the buyer of bundled sub-prime loans from default of the mortgages. THe real explosion in sub-prime lending took place after the passage of this bill in late Dec 2000.



http://motherjones.com/politics/2008/05/foreclosure-phil">WHO Wrecked the Economy: Foreclosure Phil


But Gramm's most cunning coup on behalf of his friends in the financial services industry—friends who gave him millions over his 24-year congressional career—came on December 15, 2000. It was an especially tense time in Washington. Only two days earlier, the Supreme Court had issued its decision on Bush v. Gore. President Bill Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress were locked in a budget showdown. It was the perfect moment for a wily senator to game the system. As Congress and the White House were hurriedly hammering out a $384-billion omnibus spending bill, Gramm slipped in a 262-page measure called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Written with the help of financial industry lobbyists and cosponsored by Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the chairman of the agriculture committee, the measure had been considered dead—even by Gramm. Few lawmakers had either the opportunity or inclination to read the version of the bill Gramm inserted. "Nobody in either chamber had any knowledge of what was going on or what was in it," says a congressional aide familiar with the bill's history.

(more)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Phil Gramm was the guy who said we had become "a nation of whiners."

60 Minutes had a good report on Credit Default Swaps called: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=114&topic_id=46775">The Bet That Blew up Wall Street

[jtuck004]

16. Thank you for that n/t

[permabear1]

17. But Clinton signed the darned bills

It wasn't just the Commodities Futures Modernization Act. It was also another Phil Gramm gem, Gramm Leach Bliley Act of 1999 which undid the Glass Steagall banking regulations of 1933 which combined to help facilitate the destruction of the economy. And as evil a character as Phil Gramm played in this unfolding tragedy, it was Bill Clinton, who signed both bills. The same Bill Clinton that I have admired for years as a decent, pragmatic president. But when history is written, I don't feel that Monica Lewsinsky is going to be Bill Clinton's biggest mistake of his presidency. Signing these financial deregulation bills are the greatest mistakes of his presidency, because they helped contribute to the downfall of the U.S. as a great nation. Let me qualify this last statement by adding that the downfall began in the Ronald Reagan administration with the start of the debt spiral and deregulation movement. Bill Clinton just went along for the ride.

[groovedaddy]

21. Those bills, as well as Nafta/Gatt, the Anti-Terrorism Act, media deregulation also come to

mind as bad things Clinton was party to. As bad as those were (and are), the ensuing 8 years were a nightmare!

[upi402]

18. Yep, great documentary. Like good old PBS n/t

[joe_sixpack]

20. It was sickening

They acted like they thought they were the masters of the universe, and had the arrogance and narrow vision that goes along with that attitude.