Tuesday night on Frontline - "The Warning"

Thread in GDP
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=8707084&mesg_id=8707084

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/

""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?"

In The Warning, airing Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2009, at 9 P.M. ET on PBS (check local listings), veteran FRONTLINE producer Michael Kirk (Inside the Meltdown, Breaking the Bank) unearths the hidden history of the nation's worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. At the center of it all he finds Brooksley Born, who speaks for the first time on television about her failed campaign to regulate the secretive, multitrillion-dollar derivatives market whose crash helped trigger the financial collapse in the fall of 2008..."

a few excerpts at the link as well.

I'll kick this before tomorrow night, you're welcome and thanks for the knr.

:)

Amazing that the same people who caused this fiasco were brought back.

such as the must see, "Obama's War".

and I agree with your comment.

This is the ultimate, "Fuck you and die peasant serfs."
And should be to anyone who has been paying attention to
the last few decades.

BHN

I worked my ass of for this guy so it was painful when it finally clicked. Sad, such potential.

The PTB looked around for their next puppet, found him and
produced their greatest hoax on the people of this country in our history.
Sad, aint it?
Ashamed to say, I was caught in the fever on election night.
Stupid me.
BHN

and you want to keep the lid on reform. This is the type of guy you want out there.

bhn

and then they propped the new eloquent puppet on the stage
to make us think we still had at chance at survival.
Not.
BHN

So happy and excited.

Then in late Nov when he was interviewed by Sixty Minutes and he said "Hank Paulson is working hard," my stomach fell to the floor.

I knew then what was going to occur.

And it has been exactly the nightmare I thought it would be.

thanks

Born is one of those 'should have beens.' I'm glad to see that Levitt recognizes the mistake.

"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."

we should hope so and you're welcome.

except vacation. Yes, we should hope so.

we'll see.

:shrug:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/16/brooksley-born-named-to-f_n_235788.html

I plan to watch it, we meet back here and discuss, no?
I can't sleep anymore, so I'll check back after the show tomorrow.
PM me if you start a thread about the information disclosed by Born.
k?
k.
BHN

...without some means to discuss it, vent rage and really--mourn.

I'm glad DU is here.

I'm not even sure I want to watch it. It's just going to make reality
that much more vivid and painful.

One would certainly go mad without others to vent and discuss
the destruction of the country by these greedy fucktards.

BHN

this one.

:)

See you tomorrow!
BHN:toast:

those who should see the movie, most likely will not.

See you tomorrow!

:)

and why am I not surprised? It's a "who's who" of the Wall Street double dealers, the only one missing was their tame SEC puppy dog, Chris Cox, who managed to look the other way even when massive scandals were dumped right into his lap with all the information he'd ever need to prosecute.

My own feeling is that a Dow of over 7000 is funny money, not based in reality and driven by cash that never really existed anywhere but on pieces of exotic paper. Anyone who thought the go-go market of the 90s, fueled by paper profits from the dotcom boom, was real needs his head examined. There are days I lower that number to about 5000, but I don't want to scare too many people.

The financial industry took a serious wrong turn when it was deregulated and the only purpose for money became to generate more money, at least on paper, instead of being invested in tangible wealth like actual productive enterprises. We now have a hollow shell of a country with too little industry to support itself and a scarcity of seed money ready to be invested to create new industries. Investing in production appeared riskier than investing in paper that created higher numbers on more paper and the country was allowed to be looted and become moribund.

While Ms. Born wouldn't have been able to eliminate the crisis, her regulations might have made it a little shallower. With less easy money to be made on fantasy paper, more might have been freed up to invest in the country and create actual wealth, rather than inflated paper profit.

The game is definitely over now, but the bankers are still fighting regulation tooth and nail. I understand financial industry lobbyists are starting to outnumber the health care lobbyists descending en masse on Congress.

Heaven help us all. It doesn't look like Congress will.

or this is all going to happen again, maybe not this year but probably next year and so on until they get off their overfed fat asses and act.

where the state legislators and governors will protect the smaller banks. They aren't the most ethical in the world, but they beat the hell out of the big boys, so I'm fine with PA getting more regulatory oversight.

one could make in the financial market as opposed to investing for the long term.

S&P 500 P/E Ratio
http://www.multpl.com/

There were people who wanted a small tax placed on derivatives as they began to grow, but nobody paid attention to them.

And whenever someone told the powers that be that the economy would be going down the shitter, they just ran off with their hands covering their ears screaming "LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA". And of course when it became a huge problem, it was too late to do anything about it.

That being said here's some perfect theme music for the show:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBRvll46Hcw

but there was money to made.

:(

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/23/business/23hedge.html


Officials Reject More Oversight of Hedge Funds

WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 — The Bush administration said Thursday that there was no need for greater government oversight of the rapidly growing hedge fund industry and other private investment groups to protect the nation’s financial system.

(...)

Three of the administration’s most senior economic policy makers — Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., his top deputy, Robert K. Steel, and White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten — are alumni of Goldman Sachs, which in the last decade has evolved into one of the most important players in the private equity market.

(...)

A previous effort by the Securities and Exchange Commission to protect investors by requiring hedge funds to register with the government failed last summer. In June, a federal appeals court ruled that the agency did not have the authority to regulate them. In leading a deeply divided commission to adopt those rules in the first place, its then chairman, William H. Donaldson, said that hedge funds had been central figures in a variety of market trading abuses and that registration was a modest and essential way for regulators to begin to understand them. Although he had the support of two of the four other commissioners for his efforts on hedge funds, Mr. Donaldson came under heavy criticism from Republican lawmakers and top administration officials for suggesting that regulators shine a light on what he called “a dark corner” of the market.

(...)

Larry Summers' words from 1999 on the repeal of Glass-Steagal. Interesting.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5358813&mesg_id=5358813


Summers to Join Obama White House, Boosts Fed Chances
Including 2007 speech by Geithner
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=4515237&mesg_id=4515237

Summers, Phil Gramm and the law NOT to regulate derivatives
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5390809&mesg_id=5390809


How Congress Rushed a Bill that Helped Bring the Economy to Its Knees
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-blumenthal/how-congress-rushed-a-bil_b_181926.html

Program just started

Greenspan should be in jail.

watch this exchange between Dylan Ratigan and Senator Cantwell on the new regulations passed by the House last week.

They have some serious doubts, Cantwell voted against the TARP and made a forceful statement on the floor about JPM.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6814247&mesg_id=6814969

Will definitely be watching ~

K&R

Must see TV

It is infuriating also, to watch these men, so arrogant and unwilling to listen to anyone. Like schoolyard bullies they went after Brooksley Born who was smarter than all of them put together.

Greenspan is a stupid man. When did this country sink to the level where men such as Summers, Greenspan and Rubin were considered to be brilliant?

To see Greenspan claim he's finally learned that he was WRONG, after destroying this country? I felt like going through the screen and slapping him. And still, in the media, he is treated with deference. And he did not even have the decency to apologize to Born?

She is a heroine. The media once again failed this country by not focusing on this while it was happening. These few men had the fate of every American in their hands as a result. Had the public been informed, she would have had support.

I do not understand why Geithner and Summers, and Bernanke, rather than people like Born who we could trust, were chosen by Obama after their criminally negligent history of mishandling this mess. All of them are directly responsible and there should be a full investigation.

But not only is there no sign of this happening, they still are stalling regarding regulating Wall St. They just can't bring themselves to stop the greed.

Disgusting, disturbing and sad that there was just one woman standing between us and disaster and they removed her.

This should be on mainstream television, every night. Great program, the kind of journalism we need and if we had it, we would not be where we are today.

The root of the problem is this: the RepubliCONs' religious zeal to worship at their theological economy I call the Church of the Holy Marketplace.

THE MARKET IS NOT SELF REGULATING when it comes to big financiers who can short stocks and then sell billions of dollars of stock to insure that their short sales pay off.

Until someone strikes the poison vine at the root, it will continue to strangle us.

to move beyond blaming one side when both are at fault.

Same thing as republicans when it comes to being pro-corporation.

the Church of the Holy Marketplace was so powerful that even a lot of Dems like Clinton fell under its spell.

It isn't going to happen- unless by some miracle,
the American people WAKE the FUCK up, fire 99% of the
so called "representatives," and people like you and me
as well as others who know how filthy the system has become,
replace them and we start all over.

Like I said, it's not going to happen.
There was a very small window at one point, and they bricked it over.

BHN

and repubs NOT the only ones; here dems very closely related.

gets lost in the details.

Sometimes I think that PBS could make an orgasm boring.

I'm starting early so I can keep up with the east coasters when the discussion begins!
:P
BHN

and valuable for any who cares.

Hope Suskind's writing book about her or related story.

and unworldly to live through this, read a little - try to hang on while I attempt to digest it - read what pepole are saying in places like DU and where do we end up - at the bottom of a deep, deep well where we are only starting to see some light and the sun approaches, but not enough, yet ... and not enough to truly understand it. Yet.

Will someone calm me down about Obama? And his choices.

Obama cannot let us and the world down like the barons steered Clinton and Bush to let us down.

And tonight in some little meeting place there will be a group of lemming-stepford leaders talking and planning their next public displays of rants against government in our lives. Their signs are stacked up along the wall until with the latest talking words. Norquist Stepford children, mothers, fathers. Too much government in our lives. See how orchetrated they are? The rail against government in their lives, are having to send money to their adult children, and they lost pensions because of deregulation, and in the end it's all Obamas fault.

I think the number of people who fall in the 70% group will rise to a good 80 tonight. Stepord - 20. Down from 27 which was down from 30 during the Iraqi bombing peak.

Where are you President Obama. Why did you put those people back in charge?

Did you ever consider using Brocksley Born?

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2008/11/obama-taps-larry-summers-recalling-summers-days-regulation-foe

As Obama Taps Larry Summers, Recalling Summer's Days as a Regulation Foe
— By David Corn | Mon November 24, 2008 1:58 PM PST

"On Monday, President-elect Barack Obama announced his economic team, noting that Lawrence Summers would be the director of his National Economic Council. In touting Summers, Obama praised the former treasury secretary for his work during the Clinton years.

Larry helped guide us through several major international financial crises – and was a central architect of the policies that led to the longest economic expansion in American history, with record surpluses, rising family incomes and more than 20 million new jobs. He also championed a range of measures – from tax credits to enhanced lending programs to consumer financial protections – that greatly benefited middle income families.

As a thought leader, Larry has urged us to confront the problems of income inequality and the middle class squeeze, consistently arguing that the key to a strong economy is a strong and growing middle class....And as one of the great economic minds of our time, Larry has earned a global reputation for being able to cut to the heart of the most complex and novel policy challenges.

While some of that might be true, Summers has been a controversial figure, and it's likely no accident that he is being handed a position that does (not) require him to be confirmed by the Senate.

But despite Summer's intellect and experience, it's worth remembering that he did blow one of the major calls of the 1990s: what to do about financial derivatives--those esoteric financial products (such as credit default swaps) that helped grease the way to the subprime meltdown. Not only did Summers oppose greater regulation for those financial instruments; he led the opposition against it..."

I think the program noted that Greenspan was in love with Rand's laissez-faire ideology and that Rubin had pretty much the same views as Greenspan. I wonder where Summers fits in the ideological spectrum.

the Clinton years he was in favor of a hands off approach.

From April 2009

Geithner's dirty little secret
By F William Engdahl

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/KD03Dj02.html

"...In the Bill Clinton administration of 2000, the Treasury secretary was Larry Summers, who had just been promoted from number two under former Goldman Sachs banker Robert Rubin to be number one when Rubin left Washington to take up the post of Citigroup vice chairman. As I describe in detail in my new book, Power of Money: The Rise and Fall of the American Century, to be released this summer, Summers convinced president Clinton to sign several Republican bills into law that opened the floodgates for banks to abuse their powers. The fact that the Wall Street big banks spent some US$5 billion in lobbying for these changes after 1998 was likely not lost on Clinton.

One significant law was the repeal of the 1933 Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which prohibited mergers of commercial banks, insurance companies and brokerage firms such as Merrill Lynch or Goldman Sachs. A second law backed by Treasury secretary Summers in 2000 was an obscure but deadly important Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. That law prevented the responsible US government regulatory agency, Commodity Futures Trading Corporation (CFTC), from having any oversight over the trading of financial derivatives. The new CFMA law stipulated that so-called over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives like credit default swaps, such as those involved in the AIG insurance disaster, (and which investor Warren Buffett once called "weapons of mass financial destruction"), be free from government regulation.

At the time Summers was busy opening the floodgates of financial abuse for the Wall Street Money Trust, his assistant was none other than Tim Geithner, the man who today is US Treasury Secretary, while Geithner's old boss, the self-same Summers, is President Obama's chief economic adviser as head of the White House Economic Council. To have Geithner and Summers responsible for cleaning up the financial mess is tantamount to putting the proverbial fox in to guard the henhouse..."

its an extremely important program.

Pelosi may have given her a role in the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.

'House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced that she’s appointing Born to the new 10-member Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, a body established by Congress to serve as a sort of 9-11 Commission for the financial crisis.


In a news release announcing the appointment, Pelosi said the new commission will provide “a full explanation of why so many people lost their homes, their life’s savings and their hard-earned pensions.”


Pelosi said: “To avoid a financial crisis of this magnitude in the future, the commission will conduct a thorough, systematic and nonpartisan examination of the failures in both government and financial markets.”


The commission is to submit its report to Congress by Dec. 15, 2010.'

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/25001.html

Old article.



Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/25001.html#ixzz0UXO1v3VT

"I'm not going to talk about it on camera."

What is she afraid of?

Being "Wellstoned?"
Interesting moment, that one.

BHN

Going to go start some sauce- but I'll be back!
Thanks again for the thread and links.
Too bad most Americans wont see this program.
They REALLY need to.
Especially those still holding on to the delusional belief of a two party system.
BHN

That is all for now- just started part 3.
BHN

linked back to this thread for some of the old articles posted here.

:hi:

If we combine them, they will stay front and center.
VERY important information.
Too hard to keep going back and forth.
I gave Elleng a link to this thread- hopefully she will request a Mod to combine them.
BHN

I'll link to Ellen's thread here as well, this is information people should know.

cities like New York, L. A., Tokyo, I think about all of the power and money and how absolutely immoral and ruthless the people who rule over us are.

Isn't it great how the only thing that happens to the "wizard" who engineered and guided that whole clusterfuck is that he has to admit in front of a Congressional committee that he was wrong? I'm sure that all of those folks whose life savings are gone, their 401-k's gutted, their homes foreclosed on, their lives wrecked, are thrilled to know that Mr. Wizard made a boo boo. That treacherous bastard should have to give up every penny of his ill-gotten gains, then he should have to panhandle on the streets of every town in America until the day he dies. And he can take his frickin' no-count wife with him. She can hold the sign when he's too weak from hunger.

Sorry, but these people are EVIL. Greedy, arrogant, totally self-centered, EVIL.

to Waxman that there was "a flaw."

I've been reading about the rise in the OTC derivatives market since 2000 on sites such as Silicon Investor and in the Contrary Investor articles.

This was not discussed in our media or by members of Congress, they did nothing.

People knew that this would someday catch up, especially after the LTCM warning, but they let the lobbyists and investors guide their decisions. Sounds like the current HC bill :(

Then to have them ask the for 700 billion and say who could have known was such an insult.

So many people lost everything, because the few were greedy.

This doc is excellent- I am learning so much I did not know!
BHN

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/33343788

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/senator-cantwell-congress-weakening-existing-derivatives-regulations

"Senator Cantwell said this today about the new derivatives legislation passed by the Financial Services Committee:

The shenanigans just began here in Washington.


What is moving through on the House side is a bill that supposedly has a new rule, but has so many loopholes that the loophole eats the rule. We want to say we have transparency and regulation, but it will continue to have loopholes

Current law with its loopholes would actually be better than these loopholes, which are just going to continue to promulgate the problem.


The Treasury Department should be ashamed of themselves. They have blessed this deal. a mirage. It's an act of commission, that's very, very dangerous for the future of our financial system.

An "act of commission" is a legal term for an unlawful action (as opposed to "an act of omission" which means breaking the law by unlawfully failing to act). If Cantwell understands the term, then she is saying that Congress is acting unlawfully by intentionally weakening derivatives regulations.

In any event, leading derivatives experts agree with Cantwell that the proposed legislation will do more harm than good..."

The proverbial foxes guarding the chicken coop.

And why in the hell aren't these people in jail instead of running the government?

I am infuriated by the last segment I just watched.
That brave woman stood alone, not one soul advocating for her
and the god damned congress piggies let it happen.
Time to CLEAN house.
They are filthy and corrupt.
BHN

i always record frontline.

The fact that Obama appointed these fucktard robber barons as
his economic advisors, instead of Born, is reason alone to leave the country.

BHN

This was a really great program, very clear explanation of what happened, and they kept the focus on the important point, which was that this one person in charge of possible regulation of this new "derivative/swap" threat, the one person who understood what a threat this was to the entire financial system, and what a fraud the whole thing was--that lone person was attacked and stopped by all the others. There was a little bit of Brooksley Born's background given on the program, of her being in college with then, very few other women and being criticized by males that she was "taking the spot away from a male" who could have been there instead--all the typical things women know. She eventually ended up with the CFTC position after being turned down as a possible Attorney General for Clinton; Janet Reno got it.

Commodities futures trading and credit default swaps originally were totally secret and unregulated, and only came to light when Procter & Gamble, which had bought many, lost a huge amount of money and sued, that it had been defrauded and never understood what it had been sold; this was when Born started to investigate. What she learned convinced her that it was a house of cards and fraud, and needed to be regulated, at least. The "Frontline" program is all about the vicious, coordinated efforts of the all-male Clinton financial advisory team to fight and destroy her, which they did--and then everything collapsed just as she said it would, and all of these investment firms collapsed with it all, and we bailed them out then, and now (and will agian).

This program reminded me again of what a conscience-less wuss Bill Clinton was, caving on every issue, supporting corporate lobbyists on every issue, letting this one women--the only good one of the whole group--be destroyed alone, and deregulating every New Deal rule, practice and law, that had kept us safe for generations, until then. Clinton also allowed Republicans to launch a full-scale attack on the IRS and its investigations of corporate crime at the same time, killing that, too. Then the Republican Congress killed Glass-Steagal, Clinton signed it like an asshole, and there were no protections left against this threat of criminal investment schemes.

Now, the criminals are back, with Obama, and the good people--Born, and Joseph Stiglitz--are still on the outside looking in. A great telling of what happened; very clear, for something so complicated.

So much for hope and change.

This program has confirmed the suspicions I have increasingly felt about the Obama
administration.

The thread about him granting the arctic drilling have not helped my state of mind.

Folks, I hate to say it, but I do believe we've been had by the PTB.

BHN