Frontline is running a special on the financial crisis:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/meltdown/
It should make interesting viewing. It will be available from 9pm New York time on February 17th–which I think means midday or thereabouts on the 20th, Sydney time.
February 26th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
I’ve just finished viewing the ‘Meltdown’ which took a while as my speakers decided to meltdown half-way through, emitting loud buzzing noises! It was time to get new speakers anyway.
A fascinating hour’s viewing.
The excerpt interviews with Sheila Bair, Chairman of the FDIC was illuminating, as was the excerpt interview with Alan ‘Ace’ Greenberg, of Bear Sterns.
Sheila Bair says she’d tried to warn of the crisis back in 2001. ‘For years there were bills in Congress to try to address what they called predatory lending, perhaps that was a prejorative — lax lending — but it was bad lending, whatever type of adjective you want to put on it. And they just couldn’t get the political momentum to get anything done. And I think that was because everybody was making money. Even borrowers were making money if they could keep refinancing.’
Greenberg said: ‘I thought it was crazy to see ads where people would lend you 140 percent of the assessed value of your house. I thought that was nuts. Did I know that grassroots brokers were getting people financing that had no business [buying], that they were falsifying their wages, they were falsifying their ability to carry the mortgage? Did I know it was that bad? No, I did not.’
‘I wasn’t as vociferous as I should have been, maybe. It’s very hard to stop a locomotive going 60 miles per hour.’